Compare and Contrast

Description

The Compare and Contrast strategy takes advantage of humans’ unique evolutionary advantage in the area of mentally connecting ideas to see how they’re similar and different. C&C often involves four elements.

1. Taking the items to be compared and describing them separately.
2. Using an organizer to establish similarities and differences between items.
3. Creating and sharing conclusions.
4. Extending learning and conclusions through task completion.

Why it works...

Compare and Contrast supports deeper student learning in the following ways.

• Connected ideas are more established in our memory than disconnected ones.
• When comparing and contrasting we’re providing students with an opportunity to draw from existing knowledge to form new knowledge.
• Students are able to create new ideas out of comparisons.

How to plan it...

1. Choose two items that, when compared with one another, will deepen students’ understanding of the content presented.
2. Establish criteria for comparing the two items. Direct students to look for key characteristics in each item individually before comparing them.
3. Students research the criteria for each item individually.
4. Provide students with a visual organizer to support comparing and contrasting both items based on the previously established criteria.
5. Finish with a discussion of the class’ findings.

Tech integration...

When looking at technology support for C&C, we need to consider the different elements of planning a C&C experience for students, based on the four phases of a C&C lesson.

1. Description - This is where you establish criteria for their comparisons. What will they look for when exploring the two resources? Using Google Classroom to share a document that can be built together (co-creating criteria) or that has already been built that shows elements to look for can help make things clear for students.
2. Comparison - Students use a visual organizer to identify similarities and differences. Google Drawings is a great entry point for making visual organizers.
3. Conclusion - Facilitate a discussion in which students share their conclusions and consider others’. A Nearpod collaborate board might be a good option for this. Go to collaborate.nearpod.com and create one to share with your students. You might also use sli.do, but that may require a little bit more work up front. Once you’ve created a board, post student thoughts and invite students to upvote the best ideas.
4. Application - This is where teacher creativity comes into play. Now that students have a good understanding of how items compare and contrast, what do you do with that knowledge to take it to the next level?