Comparison and Contrast

SEL Competencies: Self- Management, Social Awareness, Responsible Decision Making

Frequent Use Strategy

Comparison and Contrast engages students in delineating, differentiating, and distinguishing information. The four connected strategies for Comparison and Contrast are comparing, classifying, creating analogies, and creating metaphors.

When using Comparison and Contrast, the teacher will model how to analyze, qualify, and organize subtle and significant similarities or differences.

Students will identify similarities and/or differences between two or more items in order to understand how they are alike, equal, or analogous to each other.

Comparison and Contrast is not effective for comparing unlike, irrelevant, and dissimilar ideas or concepts. It is not about the artifacts alone, such as a Venn diagram or T chart. This strategy is especially effective when the learning requires analysis to examine subtle similarities and differences between relevant ideas or concepts and results in a deeper understanding of the people, places, things, or ideas being studied.

Look Fors

Teacher Behaviors for Promoting SEL Competencies

Teach students how to build upon each other’s thoughts.
Provide students with the appropriate language and actions for communicating how to agree and disagree. Model how to use the appropriate language and actions.

Student Behaviors for Developing SEL Competencies

Recognize, understand, and empathize with others when using comparison, analogies, classification, and metaphors.
Build or extend upon peers’ thoughts and ideas.

Articles

Texts

- Silver, H.F. (2010). Compare and contrast: Teaching comparative thinking to strengthen student learning. Alexandria, VA: ASCD. Ch 1 excerpt
- Marzano, R.J. (2017). The new art and science of teaching: More than fifty new instructional strategies for student success. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. p. 39-41
- Knight, J. (2013). High-impact instruction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. p. 96-116 Thinking Maps
- Marzano, R.J. (2017). The new art and science of teaching: More than fifty new instructional strategies for student success. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. p. 39-40

Model Lessons

	Shapes: Agreement Circles Students will analyze and compare 2D and 3D shapes using informal language to describe similarities and differences.
	Qualitative Graphs: Heart Rate Monitoring Students will describe the relationship between two quantities and sketch a graph that shows features of a function that has been described verbally.
	Measurement: Concept Cartoons Students will view concept cartoons and decide which character in the cartoon they most agree with.
	Physical and Chemical Changes Students will annotate an article, identifying what they think are chemical and physical changes; collaboratively discuss visuals related to chemical and physical changes to determine which does not belong and why then transfer their clarified thinking to a written response.

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