Paired Books Tips

Why Use Paired Books

Use paired books to teach readers to see connections and differences across texts. Students build perspective and comprehension as they consider multiple viewpoints on a topic or issue. Student discussion using carefully crafted text-dependent questions builds speaking and listening skills. Three question types require students to:

• construct an answer from evidence found in one place within a text (Level 1)
• gather evidence from several places within a text or texts (Level 2)
• use inferencing skills to construct an answer from text evidence and experience (Level 3)

How to Use Paired Books

Each paired book lesson is associated with two different books. Each book has a printable and a projectable version for whole-class or small-group collaboration. Books are available as eBooks for members of both Reading A-Z and Raz-Kids together as part of our Learning A-Z Reading Solution.

Sample Instructional Sequence

1. Introduce the key, overarching question.
2. Introduce the first book and preview its set of questions.
3. Read and discuss the book, recording important points from the discussion of the question set on the note-taking graphic organizer.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 with the second book.
5. Lead a book comparison discussion using the cross-text activities.
6. Have each student provide a written response to the key, overarching question.