What is Spot the Difference?
Spot the Difference is an instructional strategy aimed to help students of all grade levels in all subjects understand text better.
The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts across grade levels emphasize two areas regarding close-reading skills: (1) students are required to understand and interpret a singular text, looking at its structure, word choice, meaning, etc., and (2) students are required to read and compare/contrast different texts.
However, before students can compare different texts, we need to help students practice pay attention to what matters in one text. But students do not know what matters until key words are changed and they experience the difference of that word swap on the reader.
For example, if the story says, “Jane crept to the podium,” we often ask our students something like, “How is Jane characterized?” Many students struggle with that question. However, once given another variation to spot the difference such as “Jane paraded to the podium,” students’ light bulbs go on, especially for those who used to struggle with analysis. Now, after comparing two different versions of one sentence, they are able to see the difference in how one word contributes to how Jane is characterized.
Therefore, students need to be exposed to different versions of the same passage so they can spot the difference by building their database of “what ifs.” What if this text had been written differently?
To be clear: the Spot the Difference strategy is not supposed to replace how we typically teach close reading but it is aimed to fill a gap, so that when we do ask students to analyze a singular text or compare multiple texts as well as produce their own writing, they are ready.
Read more about the specific steps of the strategy here.