Compare & Contrast: Teaching Comparative Thinking to Strengthen Student Learning (A Strategic Teacher PLC Guide) - Softcover

Harvey F. Silver (author)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1416610588 ISBN 13: 9781416610588

Publisher: ASCD, 2010

Synopsis

Here's the perfect tool for implementing the ideas from our best-selling ultimate guide to teaching strategies, The Strategic Teacher. Developed in partnership with over 75 schools, this guide makes it easier and more effective for teams of teachers to engage in professional development using the Compare & Contrast strategy. Included in the guide are activities, sample lessons, student work examples, planning forms, and learning tools that will help you:

• Understand how Compare & Contrast boosts student memory and cements conten.
• Plan an effective lesson using Compare & Contrast.
• Evaluate your lesson and use your experiences to deepen your understanding of the strategy.
• Know what to look for in student work to tell how effective your use of the strategy has been.

Be sure to order enough guides to enable every teacher to engage in all the hands-on learning activities.

About this title

From the Back Cover

You're holding a new kind of professional development tool called a Strategic Teacher PLC Guide. Designed in partnership with more than 75 schools, Strategic Teacher PLC Guides make the important work of bringing high-impact, research-based instructional practices into every classroom easier than ever before. Each guide focuses on one strategy from the bestselling ASCD book The Strategic Teacher: Selecting the Right Research-Based Strategy for Every Lesson and serves as a complete professional development resource for a team of teachers to learn, plan, and implement the strategy in their classrooms.

This guide focuses on Compare & Contrast, a critical thinking strategy unique in its capacity to build students' memories, eliminate confusion, and highlight crucial similarities and differences. Research shows that comparative thinking strategies are the single most effective way to improve student learning. Compare & Contrast takes the natural human capacity to make comparisons and maximizes its effectiveness by leading students through a four-phase learning process that involves

* Describing each item separately using criteria.

* Capturing key similarities and differences on a comparison organizer.

* Forming and discussing generalizations and conclusions.

* Synthesizing learning by completing a relevant task.

This PLC Guide takes you and your colleagues on a "guided tour" of the Compare & Contrast strategy, enabling you to

* Explore the principles and classroom phases that make Compare & Contrast such an effective strategy.

* Experience a model lesson using the Compare & Contrast strategy and learn from sample lessons designed by other teachers.

* Plan a complete lesson using the Compare & Contrast strategy.

* Reflect deeply on your lesson to refine and expand your use of the strategy.

* Examine student work at various levels of proficiency and use your findings to plan next steps in building students' comparative analysis skills.

Edition details

• Publisher: ASCD
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1416610588
• ISBN 13: 9781416610588
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 84