Similarities+&+Differences

Comparing
===We have students compare and contrast to look at the similarites and differences between things. It helps them to understand what they are learning at a deeper level. In the classroom we have compared books to other books, books to movies, characters in books, various concepts in science and ourselved to one another. The one time that it went bad was the first time I had them do a double bubble for the first time and they weren't sure what to do.===

**Classifying**
===**Classifying helps students to make connections between objects, events, animals, etc. They are able to put them into groups by their same attributes. I have been using a lot of tree maps to organize the story elements of books. They group things by characters, setting, problems, events, and solutions. I recently had them classify vivid words (words that make writing more picturable for the reader). My students did an amazing job of coming up with vivd words. I put them in groups and gave them 3 general topics (red, happy, hard etc.) and they came up with various things that could describe them.The one time that my students had a really hard time with classifying was the first time that I had them classify the story elements. I thought that they understood what each one was, but they didn't. Now they have a pretty good idea of what they are.**===

**Metaphores**
===**We have students come up with metaphors give students a better way to picture things. Often we relate a topic that is new to students to something that they already know. I have used a couple in science right now with the students. we are studtying the solar system and just today we were talking about how Polaris is bigger than the sun, but doesn't look like it because it is further away from us than the sun. I compared it to lights that are far away. We are currently comming up with vivd words for their writing. An example would be what could you say instead of just "good." One of the ones we came up with is "as good as gold" and another is"its as good as air conditioning on a hot summer say." Writing is our main focus right now.**===

**Analogies**
===We have students create analogies in order to see the relationship between concepts. In our district we use a bridge map to do this. We have touched on these here an there in our daily language practice. One of them was cat:kitten:dog: and they had to fill in puppy. They had difficulties with this. I should really work on this more with them, but with the demad for us to do reading and writing workshops, where they have choice and don't do work sheets, there just isn't time. I am going to try to find more time to do this with them.===

This would be something that I would print out and give the students to fill out. I would leave the similarities filled in and then have them find the differences. I am currently trying to encourage the higher thinking skills.

==I didn't mind using gliffy. It was pretty easy to make a version of a tree map for classifying. This was a lot easier to use than the Thinking Maps software. I would probaly fill this out on the Smartbaord as the students filled out one of their own.==