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 45 Summarizing & Notetaking 34 Reinforcing Effort & Providing Recognition29 Homework & Practice28 Non-Linguistic Representation 27 Cooperative Learning27 Setting Objectives & Providing Feedback 23 Generating & Testing Hypotheses23 Questions, Cues, and Advance Organizers 22

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

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

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

8. Conclusion What causes the differences and what are these effects? What discussion questions will I use to develop students thinking? Are the concepts more alike or different? 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 Classification Decision Making 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 Select a graphic organizer. Identify similarities and differences.

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