What could be more fun than two birthday parties in one day? Compare and contrast two parties with a short reading passage and a graphic organizer that focuses on character, setting, and events from the story.

Combine your pupils' love of music with their growing knowledge of poetry! First, have them bring in their favorite songs for a discussion on word choice and literary devices. Then, use a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast the...

Learners will compare and contrast two songs from the Civil War era, one from the North and one from the South. They'll write a comparative essay on their songs, and then compare their essays and songs with others in their small groups....

Bruce Springsteen’s “My Hometown” and Billy Joel’s “Allentown” motivate young lyricists to craft poems about their own home town. Groups compare the two songs, identifying details, symbols, and conflicts. Individuals then picture a place...

Learning how to compare and contrast is a core skill. Learners compare two music selections that showcase a specific heritage. They draw and discuss how each song and the composers of each song used their personal heritage as...

Combine your instructional activity on patriotism with a instructional activity on comparing and contrasting. Focusing on The Star Spangled Banner, Take Me Out to the Ballgame, and The Old Folks at Home, this instructional activity...

Show your school spirit! Class members use instruments or sing along and employ what they have learned in the two previous lessons to perform their school's songs.

When do you use a comparative adjective instead of a superlative adjective? Review grammar usage with a learning exercise about comparative and superlative forms of adjectives, in which readers use context clues to select the...

Although the work Americans do has changed over time, the plight of the American worker has largely remained the same. Facilitate a class discussion aboutAmerican workers using Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Village Blacksmith" and...

Regional dialect can make a lovely poem even more beautiful. After translating the Scots words in "A Red, Red Rose" into modern English, class members identify the two similes Robert Burns uses in his poem.

This lesson is intended for a music class but would be a great way to teach compare and contrast to any class. Kindergarteners dance the Hokey Pokey to four different styles of music and examine two paintings of Humpty Dumpty, then...

Students investigate Korean music. In this music instructional activity, students listen to two Korean folk songs, "Arirang" and "Doraji," and compare them to each other. Students discuss the musical similarities between the two songs.

Review and use standard units of measure with your math class. They move from station to station estimating and measuring length, volume, weight, and area. At each station they estimate and measure, and then compute the difference...

Students build the two models of the universe created by Aristotle and Copernicus. They compare and contrast the two universes. They create hypothesis on how each model functions.

You can't go wrong with Star Wars! A video set to the Star Wars theme song presents a problem solving situation. The task? Determine how many small Post-It notes will fit on a bulletin board. The problem requires individuals to compare...

Given two nouns separated by an adjective, learners create eight sentences using the adjective in comparative form. Example: Jamaica/hot/UK, which becomes Jamaica is hotter than the UK. They then write the superlative form of eight...

Face the vertex of two-dimensional shapes and discover what each figure requires as part of its classification. With one shape per slide, learners see what makes each shape special and compare it to others with similar qualities. 

Robert Frost's "Choose Something Like a Star" and John Keats' "Bright Star" provide the text for a two-part instructional activity in which class members analyze the effects of style on meaning in poetry. Randall Thompson's song cycle...

Students explore the role of protest songs. For this early American history lesson, students research the acts passed by the British that angered colonists. Students then listen to protest songs from contemporary American history prior...

With the songs "My Hometown" by Bruce Springsteen and "Allentown" by Billy Joel, learners examine external versus internal conflict. When they have finished the first part of the lesson, they create their own poem (or song) about the...

Music is a universal pleasure, but writing about it can be a little trickier. An informative handout discusses common types of music writing assignments that one might encounter in a college-level course. Individuals read about musical...

Third graders write a song.  In this melody lesson, 3rd graders discuss their favorite nursery rhymes.  Students sing two songs and compare their melodies.  Students use the melody of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to write a...

Music has been used to convey thoughts, feelings, and the human condition for thousands of years. Your class will analyze several songs hear in the animated classic, "Charlie Brown." They will listen to several jazz pieces from the show,...

After reading and discussing Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich, pupils compare/contrast the concept/theme of love within several multiple pieces of literature. They must support their claims with textual evidence. In addition, they analyze...