Lessons · Teaching · two passages that disagree, and a chart beside a text
Two passages, and a chart beside a text
Paired questions ask how two sources relate: where they agree, where they differ, and what one author would say about the other's claim. A chart or table beside a passage is the same question in another medium: read what the chart measures, over what period, in what units, before reading anything off it.
Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.
In beta. This lesson was written for Hone and has not yet been checked by a state certification officer. Practice material, not professional advice. What that means.
What it is for
This is the question type nearest to real professional reading and nearest to what you will ask children to do. It is also where candidates lose marks by answering from the passage they read more carefully, which is nearly always the first one. Both sources are on the table and the question is about the space between them.
How to think about it
Summarise each source in one sentence before comparing. Then name the relationship in your own words: agreement with a different emphasis, disagreement about cause, agreement about facts and disagreement about what to do. For a chart, read the axis labels, the units and the range first, and only then look at the shape.
Worked example
Both authors may agree on the facts and disagree entirely on what should be doneThe commonest real relationship and the one whose options are hardest to tell apart.
'Author B would call A's evidence too narrow' needs a line in B about narrow evidenceA disagreement you can feel but not point at is not one the test will reward.
A chart's axis may not start at zero, which makes a small change look enormousRead the numbers on the axis before reading the shape of the bars.
A table's units may be thousands, so a cell reading 14 means 14,000The heading says so, and the heading is the part everybody skips.
Your turn
Name the first thing to read on a chart.
Read the labels, units and range before the shape
Solve one, graded on the server
The trap
Deciding which author you agree with. A comparison question does not have a correct side, and having taken one makes the option that flatters it feel like the answer.