This interactive guide provides an introduction to the basic characteristics and resources that are typically used when students compose comparison and contrast essays. The Comparison and Contrast Guide includes an overview, definitions and examples. The Organizing a Paper section includes details on whole-to-whole (block), point-by-point, and similarities-to-differences structures. In addition, the Guide explains how graphic organizers are used for comparison and contrast, provides tips for using transitions between ideas in comparison and contrast essays, and includes a checklist, which matches an accompanying rubric.

Visit this interactive tool at: http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/compcontrast/.

ReadWriteThink Lessons That Use This Tool

Artistic Elements: Exploring Art Through Descriptive Writing (3-5)
In this lesson, students become engaged in the studies of both art and written language, as they create descriptive writing pieces in which adjectives are used to describe the artistic elements present within a work.

Comparing and Contrasting: Picturing an Organizational Pattern (6-8)
Using picture books as mentor texts, students learn effective strategies for organizing information that compares and contrasts. Students can then apply appropriate organizational strategies to their own papers.

Creative Communication Frames: Discovering Similarities between Writing and Art (6-8)
Build a comparative frame to explore the creative processes of writing and art as communication. Graphic organizers assist the development of comparative vocabulary and generate discussions of analogy and metaphor in art. Apply to a real or virtual tour of an art gallery to develop narrative, expository, or analytical writing.

Critical Literacy: Women in 19th-Century Literature (9-12)
Thoughtful exploration of two short 19th-century texts introduces questions of critical literacy: What is the position of the writer and what is the intended audience for a literary work?

Examining Plot Conflict through a Comparison/Contrast Essay  (3-5)
This lesson invites students to identify types of plot conflict in literature. Using excerpts from picture books, as well as graphic organizers, students learn to identify plot conflict as well as the ways that the plot develops in relationship to the conflict. The lesson culminates with a comparison/contrast writing activity.

Exploring Compare and Contrast Structure in Expository Texts (3-5)
Students explore the concept of compare and contrast using expository texts. They learn clue words that signal a compare and contrast structure and how to use Venn diagrams for note-taking and representing new information learned from texts.

Exploring Setting: Constructing Character, Point of View, Atmosphere, and Theme (9-12)
This lesson uses canonical and non-canonical texts by Dybek, Dickens, Poe, and Morrison to help students understand how authors use language to create setting and, in turn, how setting constructs other elements in a literary work. The lesson offers extension opportunities through formal essays, film reviews, and poetry analysis.

Native Americans Today (3-5)
Through this lesson, teachers can use children's nonfiction books and the Internet to help their students develop accurate, substantive information about Native American people in the present day.

Shape Poems: Writing Extraordinary Poems About Ordinary Objects (3-5)
In this lesson, students learn the characteristics and format of shape poems and write their own shape poems using an online interactive activity.

Teaching the Compare and Contrast Essay through Modeling (3-5)
This lesson uses brainstorming and modeling to encourage young writers to create their own texts. The teacher demonstrates the process of writing a comparison and contrast paper for the class, inviting them to collaborate in the process. Students continue the process of writing the essay on their own.

Tell and Show: Writing With Words and Video (6-8)
Written text can enhance—and be enhanced—by adding visuals such as video footage. In this lesson students explore how written and spoken narration enhances video footage, ultimately writing an essay that becomes a series of captions for a teacher-created video.