Remember EdTPA? Or whatever equivalent multi-step recording and analyzing of your teaching you had to do to clear a credential in your state? Ugh, turning that thing in felt like almost as much of an accomplishment as turning in my Master’s Thesis.
One of the most frustrating parts though, was after I’d worked so hard on that lesson, and I was going through the formative assessments, I realized that half of my students hadn’t demonstrated understanding because they couldn’t read the text I’d given them to use to demonstrate the skill. Whoops.
From that moment, I knew I had to keep teaching and assessing skills separate from independent reading abilities as much as possible. I blogged about lots of ways to separate analysis from reading in a recent post, but when teaching compare and contrast, one solution was the heads and tails-above winner: Starting with pictures.
Teaching Compare & Contrast with Media
Starting a few days before we will be working heavily on compare and contrast, I have students look at two different pictures to make comparisons. The pictures are simple and the comparisons obvious, but it eases students in and helps me figure out who makes meaningful comparisons and who goes with such astute observations as “they are both people.”
Then I go with songs. I pick ones that are currently so popular that I know they almost all know them, so popular that I only have to play about a minute of each for the purposes of our practice. By now we’ve talked about meaningful comparisons, so I ask them to point out the “too obvious” comparisons first so we get “they are both songs” and “they both have singing” out of the way.
Now we are finally on to comparing things from text, but I start with things I’ve read to them (ie; our class read aloud) or short texts I read as a part of that day’s practice. I may also start with things I’ve had a volunteer read to the class to give them and myself a break from me talking.
Finally, I let students make comparisons independently, with a text.
Moving into Compare & Contrast Writing with Scaffolds
Before we start writing our first compare and contrast piece, I take another detour to support all students. I review our notes together.
Yes, I go ahead and grade or give feedback based on what students came up with on their own, but if they didn’t comprehend the text well enough to make good comparisons, I don’t want them to start writing already behind.
So, I make space for students to share what they came up with as a whole class or in groups, and let students add to their own notes with ideas from their peers. This way, as they set out to begin to write, everyone has strong comparisons to include and they can focus on creating coherent writing, which I can grade separately from the original comprehension.
It may seem like this takes extra time, but it saves me so much time trying to figure out how to grade a student’s writing when I can’t separate their lack of understanding from the writing itself. Questions like “did he not know to keep differences separate from similarities or did he think that these are both ways that the two characters are the same” made my rubric driven grading go haywire before I started taking this step.
For the students who need it, I will also either have them write individual similarities and differences sentences before going to paragraphs. For others, I will guide them to write a similarities paragraph together in a small group, and then release them to write a differences paragraph on their own. On the flip side, for students who are ready for it, I have them include comparisons of style in their writing as well.
By implementing these scaffolds along the way, I’ve found far more of my students are able to develop and hone their skills with comparison regardless of the reading level they start out at.
