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to provide students an option to utilize the compare and contrast learner
centered strategy in your classroom
you can go about a different ways depending on what your goal and
outcome are
if you want students to do it individually or in small groups
or you want them to do it independently you can provide them with
a very simple compare contrast we're all very familiar with the Venn diagram of two
overlapping circles
contrast information on the outside compared information on the inside
I was able to create this very easily in a Microsoft Word document
just by inserting shapes circles
and I
adjusted the transparency and the shell color to allow for
visibility on the overlap area so if I
did something like this it would allow the students to compare two
similar items and identify what is the same one is different so for this
example
I'm using Civil Rights Amendment and the Equal Rights Amendment
if I want to provide these to the students via blackboard
what I would want to do
is to go into my discussion board
click
on the forum that I want to utilize
create a thread we'll label it the compare and contrast
and then I can attach it
using the attachment
they can access the compare and contrast document
so it will download
and then when they reply if i'm having them fill this out electronically online
they can attach it they can attach their
updated version and other students would be able to access said depending
on your settings have the forum
and this would allow other people to see what
the students had come up with as their results
another way to do this if you want it
specifically wanted students to do this as a group project
if you come down to the course tools section
we have what's called a wiki wikis have to be utilized in the small group
settings so let's say that I have the students in small groups
and as a group activity I'm going to have them
complete a wiki so I'm going to go and select a group that I want the wiki to
be available in
and I'm going to
go ahead click create wiki I'm going to name it
make sure it's available make sure that the participants can edit
and then submit
when you do this
the way that you would set it up is that you would provide
you would begin with table So
the table you want three columns and you can do as many roses you like let's say
actually go ahead and will do
two three rows
then we're going to go ahead and expand this so it's
large and will enter and
the information of what we are comparing and contrasting
so we are doing the 14th amendment
and we're doing the nineteen
amendment
so now this is set up
students can come in
and they can enter
their information
and the nice thing about a wiki is
that students are able to come in and
edit it each person so that one person can add to what the other person did
and it is one collective document so that's why this is something you have to
do in a small group setting
because if you had 15 peopleediting this document that would be a little overwhelming
and then you can compare what youth group as
created so this is another way to do to compare and contrast
so those are two separate ways
that you could complete the square centered strategy and again just to
highlights some in the benefits is it that it allows students to utilize
critical thinking skills
analyzing nuances between two separate things I
and
it helps clarify ideas so this is a great strategy to utilize in your classroom