I have been teaching analogies to elementary students for years, so I felt validated when I read the research about teaching analogies. In Marzano, Pollock, and Pickering’s book Classroom Instruction That Works, the authors write about 9 instructional strategies that have the greatest effect on student achievement. Similarities and Differences is one of those strategies. When you teach analogies, your students are making comparisons. At the lowest level, these comparisons may be simple sorting activities. But at the highest level, similarities and differences include analogies which is basically reasoning by comparison.