Discovering Dickens

Compare and contrast two pieces of literature with this instructional activity. With the use of a Venn diagram, pupils make connections between literature and real-life situations. They practice skills of surveying a text looking for...

A Tale of Two Cities is the core text for five lessons in a Curriculum Guide for Charles Dickens' famous novel. To begin, scholars examine Dickens' use of anaphora in the first line of the novel. Next, they compare the point of view in a...

Grab any two topics, some index cards, and a couple of kids, and you're ready to compare and contrast! The resource provides instructions for this method and three graphic organizers in addition to or in place of the index cards.

This graphic organizer can be use with students when they read an informational text. Using a Venn diagram to organize content, students will write important similarities and differences after reading an informational text and analyzing...

Comparing and contrasting goes beyond beyond obvious differences—it includes critical thinking skills, too! Through a short video, writers learn how to organize ideas within a compare/contrast paper. The video highlights different styles...

Not all compare and contrast assignments have writers compare and contrast in the same way. Some only ask for comparisons, others only ask for contrasts, and many require more focus than a simple list of similarities and differences....

Practice the strategy of summarizing to gain meaning and knowledge from an informational text. Young readers highlight supporting details and main ideas, and then they use this to summarize two articles: "The Great Quake" and "What...

Creation and destruction. Scholars use a Venn diagram to compare the creation story in Ovid's The Metamorphoses with that in the book of Genesis. Pupils then note differences between the two texts and offer suggestions for why the texts...

To gain an appreciation of the power of point of view, class members compare Ovid's version of the myth of "Orpheus and Eurydice" with that used by H.D. in her poem, "Eurydice." Individuals then craft a reflection in which they use...

Twelfth graders compare and contrast information from stories.  In this similarities and differences lesson, 12th graders read about Milton Hershey and Forrest S. Mars to learn about the lives of the two men.  Students complete...