This article discusses the four forms of identifying similarities and differences: comparing, classifying, creating metaphors, and creating analogies and how these strategies can be used in an elementary classroom.

This is a remix of Alike or Different Game from Illustrative Mathematics, https://tasks.illustrativemathematics.org/content-standards/tasks/515.  The purpose of this activity is to give students practice classifying objects according to one attribute to support sol K.12.  The teacher gives each student an object.  They travel the room with their hand raised to find another student to compare their object with.  They compare to see if the object is alike or different and how (color, size, shape, thickness).  They trade objects and travel the room to find someone else to compare with. 

Students will participate in a 5E lesson on classification. To ENGAGE, students will think about common vs scientific names and interpret relatedness between four species. To EXPLORE, students will watch a clip of their choice from Our Planet and document organisms' defining characteristics. Students create a hierarchy to predict the relatedness of the species. To then learn about classification systems, students will participate in the EXPLAIN activities. Three videos and guided notes are available for students to document their learning. An EVALUATIVE formative assignment Candy Cladogram Drag and Drop is available for students to practice their understanding of phylogenetics. Then, students will ELABORATE on their knowledge by researching the scientific names of the organisms they observed in the Our Planet clip (explore section). Students will evaluate the accuracy of their orginial hierarchy and explain how scientific developments have impacted classification. Additional cladograms are included for students to interpret.

In the engage section of the 5Elesson, students are introduced to the role of fossils as evidence of evolution and evolutionary relationships by watching a videos about the discovery of Lucy and Ardi and consider what type of information that they can gain from skull fossils. Students will then explore features of skulls from human ancestors and the modern day Homo sapien. After measuring skull to cheekbone ratios, students will create a graph to compare various species. Several interactives are provided to explain fossils, skeletal evidence for human evolution, and phylogenetic trees. Then, students will apply their skills of analyzing data about anatomical similarities and genetic information to depict evolutionary relationships between organisms using cladograms. To evaluate student understanding, students will complete an evolutionary relationships CER.

This article discusses the research-based strategy of identifying similarities and differences and provides links to web sites to develop teacher's content knowledge.

Students will classify random animals based on each animal's attributes. They will get to investigate the physical characteristics of each animal during this hands-on sorting activity. Students will strengthen their ability to categorize and classify. 

This free, online article, developed for elementary teachers, describes a Kindergarten polar science, standards aligned, unit centered on The Polar Express developing literacy, math, and science skills.

Students classify themselves into different groups based on observable characteristics of clothing and accessories, then apply to biological classification systems.

Educators Guide for this unit:
http://education.eol.org/lesson_plans/2-5_ScienceSkills_BioblitzSkillbuilderOverview.pdf

Lessons in this unit:
Biodiversity Skillbuilder 1: Meet a Creature
Biodiversity Skillbuilder 2: ID That Bird!
Biodiversity Skillbuilder 3: How Diverse is Biodiversity?
Biodiversity Skillbuilder 4: Modeling Classification
Biodiversity Skillbuilder 5: ID Using a Dichotomous Key

This article describes seven strategies for assisting English Language Learners with science vocabulary development.