For this entire week I had to teach the students compare and contrast essay. Additionally, the theme for the week was “Social Issues”.
How should I get them to understand the structure of the essay and the framing for each body paragraph?
Firstly, I got each class to list out the social issues that they knew about. (I highlighted the fact that a social issue in one culture might not be in another, and vice versa.) After some coaxing and jolting of memories, ideas flowed freely. After that, I lectured them on the structure of the compare and contrast essay. I also told them what the essay writer’s intention should be when writing such an essay.
Then, each class chose two out of various social issues they listed.
From each issue, they had to list out a number of aspects that both issues had in common. For example, the aspects might be causes and effect. A group of students were assigned to one aspect.
They had to choose one of these issues to be a counsellor in after comparing and contrasting the aspects of each social issue. For the purposes of the university’s essay writing norms, they should only compare and contrast three aspects. Each aspect would correspond to one body paragraph. The topic sentence of each body paragraph should be suitably written.
These images are the results of the deliberations for each class.
PPIPT 6
FTK4
FTK5
PPIPT 1
Manufacturing 1
