Help young learners understand friendship and empathy with two reading comprehension lessons. Each lesson focuses on a story about a child with autism, and encourages readers to compare and contrast the characters to each other and to themselves.

Concepts

autism, reading comprehension, characters, setting, plot, literary elements, compare and contrast

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Additional Tags

english language arts

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Instructional Ideas

• Read the stories aloud to youngsters twice; have them listen all the way through the first time, and pause for discussion the second time
• Lead a discussion about autism to see what your kids already understand, and to provide prior knowledge
• Assign some of the activities as homework for kids to work with parents

Classroom Considerations

• The stories are about autism, so you'll need to provide enough information for kids to understand the sensitive nature of what they are reading

Pros

• Provides bonus activities for enrichment and extension
• Offers reading comprehension questions, vocabulary words, and additional activities to synthesize information

Cons

• Copies of both stories are necessary in order to complete the lesson

Common Core

RL.K.3 RL.1.3 RL.2.3 RL.3.3