Do you use comparative essay writing (e.g., AP-style LEQs or DBQs) in your teaching? How do you structure those assignments to build students’ comparative thinking skills?
Do you use comparative essay writing (e.g., AP-style LEQs or DBQs) in your teaching? How do you structure those assignments to build students’ comparative thinking skills?
Even though I don't teach an AP class, I do have my ML students write comparative essays. Successfully being able to do so shows their mastery of compare & contrast language, as well as of the content. I always start by having students "take notes" on a Venn Diagram or a graphic organizer, such as the one created by OER. To ensure that students compare and contrast the same topics, I will provide a list of questions they could answer. This isn't, of course, exhaustive and students may chose to write down ideas beyond the list of questions. But it does provide a good starting point for many. Afterwards, I provide a semi-structured writing template with sentence starters that encourage comparative thinking. Once students hand in their completed "notes" and semi-structured paragraph, I will review it and provide them comments for future improvement.
I recently had students in US VA History complete this exercise by comparing the lives of immigrants arriving through Ellis Island in the early 1900s and the lives of immigrants today. I've also done a similar exercise in my Rome unit, asking students to chose if they'd prefer to live in Athens or Sparta, as a woman, merchant, or soldier. Their responses are always interesting to read!
I really think that scaffolding based on what you know about your students is really important. When we do our PBAs, our team makes sure that everyone stays with the same questions and assessments but everyone is able to teach the content in their own way. For example, one teacher will print out all the documents, organize the notes sheet, and give the assertion prompts to their students, while another teacher will just give them everything together at once and then tell them to go to work. I'm probably somewhere in the middle but again it changes depending on the time of the year and the specific class. Nevertheless, I think everyone benefits from using thinking tools or routines like the Venn diagram Nicole mentioned to expand their thinking.
I agree with Patrick O'Brien, scaffolding is very important with our lower-level learners like MLs and Sped students. Especially when students are working on PBAs. We have made essay organizers that have step by step directions for the students to go through the essay so they can never get lost or jump around. Also, we make Google Slides for the resources and hyperlink the sources into it so students will have everything they need at their fingertips. So, the comparative thinking skills are built into the assignments, so students aren't overwhelmed by the process.
I have my students do various DBQs, especially since our PBA happens twice a year. At the beginning of the year, I introduce the first one as a group activity, where they answer the question: Was the Age of Exploration positive or negative? I give them a set of primary and secondary sources, and they work together to break down the documents, pull out key information, and organize an essay outline. They come up with a thesis, plan out their body paragraphs, and decide how to wrap it up with a strong conclusion. This gives them a chance to practice using evidence to support an argument before they have to do it on their own.
Doing this as a group helps them get comfortable with analyzing different perspectives and figuring out how to structure their ideas. They get to bounce thoughts off each other, refine their arguments, and see different ways to use the sources. It also builds their confidence so that when they do their DBQs independently later in the year, they already have a solid foundation.
We work on aspects of DBQ's and LEQ's and building the students skill for this type of writing, all year in both my AP and standard courses. With both AP and standard we will use graphic organizers that pose the same question but take two different perspectives. Typically these graphic organizers/charts will be paired with multiple documents that allow for students to analyze different views on a topic. For both AP and standard, the graphic organizers/charts are very helpful for laying out contrasting and complimentary view points. With standard we also utilize, primarily in the beginning of the school year, but also scaffold throughout the school year, venn-diagrams as this is a tool students are familiar with when outlining compare and contrast prompts. We emphasis that comparisons in venn-diagrams need to align rather than just being differences. For instance, 'baseball and soccer both incorporate round balls into the game', rather than something along the lines of 'baseball has dirt on the playing field while soccer is 90 minutes long'.
My World I Honors students often write PBA comparison essays. For the most recent PBA comparing the Fall of the Western and Eastern (Byzantine) Roman Empire, students filled out a research chart in which they first wrote notes on both empires using provided primary and secondary resources, and then grouped this research into two different chosen topics before starting on the essay outline. This is an effective method to ensure students compare both empires by topic, rather than writing one body paragraph on each empire in the essay.
I teach IB Geography and in looking at concepts we often use compare and contrast to look at various aspects of a particular concept. Often, these start earlier in the year by working through looking at similarities, differences, patterns, etc. and building towards greater elaboration, connection, and developing of points that become the foundation of essay writing. Given the short runway of the IB year (1 year SL course) this is a quick developmental time, but affords students the opportunity to find greater assertions to be made that continue to deepen their thinking. In developing these skills, we often start with during notes comparisons, using infographic studies, watching videos and looking for similarities and differences and then building towards writing introductions, detailed outlines and essays.
In my honors World 2 class, essays (like the PBA) tend to be summative assignments that I don't scaffold much. Instead, we work on the different skills needed for those essays at other parts of the year. For example, my students are in the middle of writing their Era 3 PBA about Hitler. They need the skill of making a claim and identifying the strongest evidence for it that we worked on in an earlier unit. They need the skill of comparing different documents by identifying and assessing the main idea, the perspective of the author, and how that source supports or challenges their claim. Like the others, I've found charts with different categories of comparison suggested and Venn Diagram helpful in scaffolding comparisons.
Most unit assessments we do there is a writing response question asking students to compare different civilizations or empires to one another. For example, on our most recent assessment students were comparing African civilizations. To prepare, we talk about each individually, talk about their similarities, complete venn diagrams and T-charts, and make sure their is a good content foundation. I find it hard for students to compare things they do not know a lot about. For now they are mainly writing in paragraph form but I hope to progress to essay form by the end of the year.
