 Objective:
Good news! You've already learned most of the skills needed
for this lesson! You've learned and practiced the skills of
comparing and contrasting informational elements within a
text. In this lesson, the skills remain the same, while you'll
be working with two or more texts, rather than one.
You'll be reinforcing the key skills you learned and practiced
in Lesson 6, so you've already done the hard work! In Lesson
7 you'll use all the same skills, except you'll be comparing
the subject of two articles, or contrasting the information
in two charts, or finding the comparison / contrast in the
main ideas of two articles.
Just for review, let's go through the Objectives, Vocab
and Tips.
In this lesson you will:
-
Review the meaning of cause and
effect, and compare / contrast, but apply the meanings
to elements in two different texts,
- Identify reading and writing strategies to help make
comparisons between different texts,
- Compare and contrast elements in two different informational
texts (this objective extends the skill learned in
Lesson 6),
- Score and evaluate
your answers.
Vocabulary:
These words will be used in this lesson. They might be quite
familiar to you, or you might want some review. For review,
just click the Tools tab and open Vocabulary.
- Cause and Effect
- Compare and Contrast
Tips and Tools:
What is cause and effect and how do I figure out
which is the cause, and which is the effect?
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In an informational selection, writers often explain events,
ideas, discoveries, or facts in a cause / effect pattern.
Things don't just happen without a reason or cause. A cause
is a starter or a reason. Some events, facts, situations,
or ideas cause others things to happen. The
result, or reason, or consequence of a cause
is an effect.
How to identify cause and effect:
- Try an "As a result of" statement with
events in the text.
- As
a result of the torrential rainfall, the ground around
the trees was soaked, and trees toppled over.
- As
a result of the oil spill in the Pacific, marine life
washed up on the beach, covered in oil and unable
to survive.
- Create a chart as you read to help understand and analyze
the connections what you read.
- In
"Dogs and People," an article you
have read, cause & effect chart might look like
this:
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Cause
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Effect
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Wolves
hung around Stone Age hunting camps and lived on
scraps.
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Wolves
became domesticated |
| Experimenters
offered the first litters of wolf pups bred for tameness
food by hand. |
Pups
in the first litters would run away or try to bite
the experimenter. |
| The
tamest foxes were bred with each other. |
The
fox offspring eventually became tame over the generations. |
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What does it mean to compare or contrast elements
in informational texts?
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Compare means to find similarities,
or things that are alike, or the same. You might be looking
for similarities in two or more events, facts or ideas.
Contrast means to find differences,
or things that are not alike. You might be looking for differences
in two or more events, facts or ideas.
Remember this (if it helps):
- Compare. A pair (different
spelling) goes together. To compare, look for pairs
of things that go together, that are alike or similar.
- Contrast. Different.
- Black and white
are contrasting colors.
- Circle and square are contrasting shapes.
- Joy and sorrow are contrasting emotions.
- Gigantic and tiny are contrasting sizes.
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contrasting
colors
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contrasting
shapes
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contrasting
emotions
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contrasting
size
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compare
sports
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compare
shapes
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compare
animals
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compare
colors
(both found in fruit
colors, crayons, and hair dye)
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Are there graphic organizers I can use to help compare or
contrast characters or events?
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Of course and glad you asked!!
Here are some links to graphic organizers to
help you brainstorm or organize details to compare and or
contrast charcters or events in a story or poem.
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How do I organize my ideas to write about similarities or
differences?
- Start out with a clear and specific introduction.
- Example:
The spider and the octopus are alike in two ways. The
poem says . . .
- Example:
This
story shows cats and dogs have both similarities and
differences.
- Follow with specific details, evidence from text.
- Example
They
both have eight legs and they both are carnivorous animals
(eat meat).
- Example
While
they are both common house pets, cats avoid water at
all costs, while dogs like to swim. (This
sentence compares and contrasts. You might also want
to discuss all similarities, then discuss all differences.)
- Organization of compare / contrast writing.
- First list all similarities, then list all differences
- OR combine similarities and differences in one sentence
as in example above. You can write several sentences
in this format.
- End with a concluding sentence.
- Example:
There may be even more similarities between the spider
and the octopus, but these are two described in the
poem.
- Example:
The author lists even more differences and wants the
readers to choose the kind of pet they like.
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Are there special words or phrases I can use in my writing
to compare and contrast?
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These show similarity
| both |
together |
alike |
equal |
uniform |
| parallel |
comparable |
equivalent |
same |
complementary |
| at the same time |
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These show differences
| different |
although |
while |
unlike |
various |
| individual |
unique |
distinct |
otherwise |
dissimilar |
| in contrast |
besides |
in spite of |
however |
on the other hand |
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In the next section, you'll see some examples of how the Tips
and Tools will help you with the skills of identifying
cause and effect, and analyzing similarities and differences
in two or more informational passages.
Example
1 >>
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