1. What kind of task will help students synthesize their learning?

2. Think about sometimes you have used comparison in your classroom
What are some lessons or situation where you asked your students to compare?
Why did you use comparison in these situations?
What are some of the strengths or some weaknesses when you used comparison as a strategy?

3. 4 Goals of Compare & Contrast
Memory
Higher Order Thinking
Comprehension
Writing in the Content Areas

4. Research clearly indicates the impact of each of these on student learning:
Category: Percentile Gain:
Identifying Similarities & Differences
Summarizing & Notetaking
Reinforcing Effort & Providing Recognition 29
Homework & Practice
Non-Linguistic Representation 27
Cooperative Learning
Setting Objectives & Providing Feedback 23
Generating & Testing Hypotheses 23
Questions, Cues, and Advance Organizers 22

5. The Four Phases of a Thoughtful Compare & Contrast Lesson
Describe
Compare
Conclude
Apply

6. Description What is the purpose What are the sources?
How will I help students identify criteria?

7. Comparison
What visual organizer will I use to help students compare?

8. Conclusion
What discussion questions will I use to develop students thinking?
Are the concepts more alike or different?
What causes the differences and what are these effects?
What can you generalize from the similarities?

9. Phase IV: Application (Synthesis)
Identify other examples of each item.
Create a product or complete a task that applies new learning.

10. Similarities and Differences
4 Types of Strategies
Compare & Contrast
Decision Making
Classification
Metaphor

11. Phase I: Description Select the items to compare.
Identify the criteria or characteristics that would focus examination of the items.
Describe each item separately.
On one hand there is… and on the other hand there is…
criteria

12. Phase II: Comparison Y Select a graphic organizer.
Identify similarities and differences. Y

13. Phase III: Conclusion Ask questions such as:
Are the items more similar or more different?
What might account for the differences? What might account for the simililarities?
What new ideas, conclusions or generalizations can you now make?

14. Principles of Comparison
Know the content
Give thoughts a shape
One, two, three stretch
Make it real