Analogy+Charting

= Analogy Charting =

An analogy that relates to your students' lives has helped them make a connection. Analogies are a powerful way to help students understand new information or concepts. Analogies help students link new learning to familiar concepts. Text-to-self connections are especially powerful: students can see how their personal lives intersect with what an author tells them. Analogies take advantage of text-to-self connections by suggesting ways students may draw upon personal experiences as a bridge to understanding new and unfamiliar territory.
 * //Cells are the building blocks of your body like bricks are the building blocks of this school.//
 * //The judicial branch of government functions like umpires in baseball.//
 * //Punctuation marks in a sentence are like traffic signs.//

Analogy charting (Buehl & Hein, 1990; Buehl, 1995) is a classroom strategy that provides a visual framework for students to analyze key relationships in an analogy in depth. Analogies are based on the compare/contrast text frame, and as students explore relationships by connecting to already known ideas, they broaden their understanding of important concepts or vocabulary. Analogy charting can be used with students to introduce a topic, to guide comprehension while reading, or synthesize understanding after reading.

Analogy Charting uses analogy to help students perceive similarities and differences between a new concept and something familiar in their lives. Using this strategy involves the following steps:
 * Using the Strategy:**

1. Determine what students already know to establish an analogous relationship to the new concept to be introduced. Selecting a familiar concept can provide a foundation for understanding the new concept. For example, students studying the concept of colony in history class can relate it to a highly familiar situation--being a dependent child in a family. (See this [|Analogy Charting Example.])

2. Introduce the Analogy Chart and provide copies for students to complete as you examine the analogy. Start brainstorming with students to generate ideas about specific characteristics or properties common to both concepts. Enter these in the //Similarities// column. Students might offer that a colony and a dependent child share the following characteristics: they rely on a parent figure for their needs, the must follow rules or laws set by others, they are related or somehow connected to the parent figure, and they sometimes have feelings of resentment and a desire to be independent and on their own.

3. Ask students to next brainstorm how the two concepts are different and enter these in the //Differences// column. This is a vital step, as it will ensure that students do not overgeneralize how the two concepts are alike, and it will reinforce that analogous relationships are not //identical// relationships. Initially, steps 2 and 3 need to be modeled extensively by the teacher, but after students develop more independence, have them complete individual copies of a blank Analogy Chart in cooperative groups.

Students may note the following in the history example: (a) a colony usually is separated geographically from the parent figure, while a child usually lives with the parent figure in a family group, (b) a colony is regarded as a negative system, while families are not, and (c) a colony's independence has historically been associated with violence, which is not characteristic of children coming of age in most families.

4. Discuss with students categories that make up the basis for comparison. For example, some relationships (both rely on the parent for protection and other basic needs, and both represent an early stage of "development") might be labeled as //Dependence// on others, while other similarities might be labeled as //Kinship or Family background//, and //Control/self-determination//.

5. Have students write a summary statement about the similarities of the new concept and the familiar concept using their Analogy Charts. Students may write about how children and colonies often depend a great deal on the parent, how they eventually grow up or mature and want to assume control over themselves, how they may feel exploited, or how resentments lead to arguments or violence in the process of gaining independence.


 * Advantages:**
 * Students enhance their understanding of new concepts or vocabulary through the analysis of familiar analogous concepts.
 * Students make connections to new material by activating related experiences and background.
 * Students gain practice in writing well-organized summaries that follow a compare/contrast text frame.


 * Resource for Implementation:** [|Analogy Charting Blank Template]

References: Buehl, D. (2009). //Classroom strategies for interactive learning//, 3rd Ed. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Buehl, D. (1995). //Classroom strategies for interactive learning//. Schofield: Wisconsin State Reading Association. Buehl, D., & Hein, D. (1990). Analogy graphic organizer: //The Exchange Newsletter of the International Reading Association Secondary Reading Special Interest Group//, 3(2), 6.