Identifying similarities and differences among things or ideas is at the top of Robert Marzano’s list of “high-yield” classroom strategies across grade levels and content areas.
In fact, Marzano and his colleagues found that teaching students to think comparatively led to an increase of 45 percentile points on performance assessments – higher than any other classroom strategy!
Using Compare and Contrast in the classroom helps students relate new information to what is already known, make abstract concepts more concrete, think more flexibly and metacognitively, and communicate more effectively (Compare & Contrast by Harvey H. Silver, ASCD)
Teaching students to find similarities and differences in stories or elements of stories can help them make those valuable text-to-text connections when they read. There are many ways we can support comparative thinking in the literacy classroom by having students compare and contrast:
- genres and text structures
- different passages by the same author
- topics or themes
- plot structure
- characters
- literary techniques
- fiction and nonfiction passages on the same theme
- different variations of the same story
- passages on the same theme with different writing styles/voices
- passages on the same theme written for different audiences and/or purposes
- Literacymathideas.blogspot.com reminds us that middle and high school students should be encouraged to make deeper connections.
GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS TO SUPPORT COMPARATIVE THINKING WITH LITERATURE
Scroll down to find a collection of suggested pairings of HIP novels for comparing and contrasting.
HIP’S FAVORITE FOLDABLE VENN DIAGRAM
Save time at the photocopier by teaching students to fold their own graphic organizers.
Click on the image to download a completed sample comparing SURVIVAL and OUR PLANE IS DOWN.
Click on the image to download a completed sample comparing the main characters in STREET RACER and PLAYING CHICKEN.
Click here to download a blank Double Bubble Graphic Organizer.
CHECK OUT THESE PAIRINGS OF HIP TITLES FOR COMPARING AND CONTRASTING
STREET RACER and PLAYING CHICKEN both focus on young men in cars, reckless behavior and tragic results.
SURVIVAL and OUR PLANE IS DOWN are both about plane crashes in the bush. Teen heroes must fight for their own survival – and save the others.
High school kids do their part to catch criminals – drug dealers and computer hackers – in both HACKER and STUDENT NARC.
STREET SCENE, DEATH ON THE SIDEWALK and TURF WAR describe gang conflicts in the inner city.
Lovers of horse stories will appreciate the similarities and differences in these two tales of horse rescues – MISTY KNOWS and DARK RYDER.
FROZEN and CAUGHT IN THE BLIZZARD tell of teens lost in an Arctic storm.
SHOW OFF and CURSE OF THE SKULL tell of characters – one female and one male – who face peer pressure to engage in illegal activities and the consequences they face.
Compare two quite different stories about troubled teens by the same author in OUTRAGE and ONE LAST SCAR.
BEHIND THE DOOR and THE WARNING both feature tales of the supernatural, one a full-length novel and the other a collection of short stories.
THE BULLY and CHOOSE YOUR BULLY compare situations with female and male bullies.