Analogy Lesson Plans That Make Connections
With the right analogy lesson plans students can get a handle on this important, and sometimes difficult, concept.
By Amy Wilding
Analogies are one of the most difficult concepts to teach students. In an analogy, students must infer the relationship within and between the words presented. They use their prior experiences, intuition, creativity, perception and much more to determine this relationship. The following analogy is a good example of how the above mentioned skills come into play.
Dog : Cat :: Beagle : Persian
In order to correctly analyze this analogy, students might say that “Beagle” and “Persian” are specific kinds of dogs and cats. This analysis uses not just prior knowledge, but logic as well. Determining more complicated relationships between words can be a very daunting, not to mention a confusing task. Additionally, students often wonder why they have to learn about this concept. Regardless of whether they see the need for such a skill, students will find that an understanding of analogies is essential to success on standardized tests, and in higher level English courses as well. Perception, comparison, science, mathematics, philosophy and logic are just a few elements incorporated in the analysis of analogies.
Effective analogy lesson plans are ones that not only make connections with other relatable skills and content areas, but provide practical and easy methods to deconstruct the analogy in order to reveal the relationship of the words.
One mini-lesson that works well is to have students create their own analogies. Once students understand the basic format and theory of relationships, teachers can gather a group of items that can be easily categorized. You can then place these items in a bag, and have students, while working in small groups, pick a bag. In the group, they should be able to use the items and discover the relationships. For example, if they find a pen and a pencil in a bag, they might conclude that a pen and and pencil are both things to write with or that a pencil uses lead whereas a pen uses ink. Once students have defined the relationship between the items in their bag, they can pass their items on to another group.
A good follow up activity is to have the students go home and find items of their own to bring into class. Following the same proceedure as above, students can share their group of items and reinforce the skill of defining relationships between words. Additionally, by incorporating tangible items into the lesson it allows for a multimodal lesson that can make the process of solving analogies more authentic.
The following lessons plans are a good place to start for any teacher tackling the interesting, yet sometimes daunting. topic of analogies.
Analogy Lesson Plans:
An Apt Comparison: Good Analogies
This lesson uses the song "America the Beautiful" to spark prior knowledge of common English terms such as metaphor and simile. The students use the song to determine the realtionship between images and themes.
This lesson uses Shakespearean poetry to highlight analogies. Students analyze the text and discuss how Shakespeare's language uses analogies to creatively present common social relationships.
This is a great introductory analogy lesson. It outlines how to present the topic and then takes the students through a simple analysis. By asking questions, students begin to understand how words that might not appear to relate really have a connection.
This lesson has students create analogies using a given set of words. Working in small groups or pairs, the students find the relationship of the words then share them with the rest of the class. This is a nice lesson because it includes other activities that will work with this topic. Vocabulary is also included.
Discussion Question:
What activities do you use to teach your students about analogies?
