Advancing Through Analogies

You can easily build your students' critical thinking and vocabulary skills with these fun analogy activities. Teaching students to solve analogies not only develops analogical thinking, it also helps students learn and apply vocabulary skills. An analogy is a comparison between two things. It points out the similarities or likenesses between things that might be different in all other respects.

The exercises included in this resource not only build thinking skills and make students more flexible and analytical, they also enhance vocabulary and writing skills. Each illustrated page presents several analogy types, along with examples of each type. Review pages give students an opportunity to identify and then solve a variety of analogies. The activities in this book will challenge students to think more critically and apply advanced vocabulary.

This book introduces 16 different types of analogies, including:

• synonyms (calm : serene),
• part to whole (ring : jewelry),
• place or location (Peru : South America),
• cause and effect (fire : smoke),
• action to object (cut : scissors), and
• characteristics (ruby : red).

These challenging activities are perfect for teaching analytical thinking, enhancing vocabulary, and improving writing skills.

Advancing Through Analogies is the most advanced book in a series from Prufrock Press that introduces analogies to young thinkers. Although the activity books in the series for younger students emphasize visual and symbolic analogies, this book for older students emphasizes verbal analogies.

Lynne Chatham holds both a bachelor's degree in education with a major in mathematics and a master's degree in curriculum and instruction. Beginning her tenure in the field of education in 1968, she has found many ways to enrich the educational experiences of children. She taught upper elementary grades, junior high mathematics, English and history, gifted programs for grades 1–8, and education classes at the university level.

Chatham founded Dandy Lion Publications in 1977, creating a publishing house that specialized in curriculum materials that were appropriate for able learners and gifted students, that combined motivating content with challenging activities, and that were easy for teachers to use. In the capacity of owner and editor, she wrote more than 50 books and edited an additional 119 books. Her goal, whether writing or editing, was to create materials that would engage students in thinking, creating, making new discoveries, and applying what they learned to new situations. A person with a great curiosity, she has written curriculum guides on many topics and is always interested in whatever topic she is currently researching or editing.

Chatham has retired from full-time involvement in Dandy Lion Publications and currently consults, writes, and edits on a part-time basis.