Читать книгу Academic Moves for College and Career Readiness, Grades 6-12 - Jim Burke - Страница 43

It’s not unusual for instructions to compare, contrast, differentiate, or distinguish to appear in writing-on-demand prompts as well as instructions across all disciplines. Because students will encounter these words frequently in a variety of tasks, it’s important that they be able to identify exactly what they’re being asked to do.

Before you teach students to compare and contrast texts, issues, situations, or works, try these four things:

 Model: Have students find similarities and differences in a work, issue, or process and write them on two different colors of sticky notes; then put these on the board. Give everyone a few minutes to read through both sets of notes. Then, have students work in small groups to organize and draw conclusions from all they’ve read. When groups are done, invite them to write their conclusions as a single sentence on the board. Discuss these as a class.

 Define Expectations: Make it clear to students whether they will be evaluated on the structure of the comparison, the content of the comparison, or both. In some formal settings, students are expected to name the points in the introductory paragraph. Be clear about your expectations for how the comparison is introduced and developed.

 Build Content Knowledge: Quite often, a comparison and contrast task can raise as many questions as it answers. Gather these questions from your class and use them to build content knowledge about an event or text before students write a second draft. Encourage research as necessary.

 Practice Mental Moves: In small groups or pairs, have students practice with a sample task, making the mental moves and answering the questions listed in the Mental Moves feature in the sidebar. Post these moves on the wall and keep circling back to them so that students internalize them and can transfer them to new learning situations.