Modern Comparison

This worksheet helps students in Grades 5 and 6 strengthen analytical writing, historical reasoning, and evidence-based explanation by comparing Prohibition to a modern debate about regulation or personal freedom, such as vaping or cannabis laws. Students write a paragraph identifying at least one similarity and one difference, connecting historical events to contemporary issues and demonstrating how past policies inform present-day discussions.

Learning Goals

• Historical Connections to Modern Issues (Grades 5-6) – Students analyze how past debates about regulation and personal freedom relate to current policies.
• Analytical Paragraph Writing – Learners organize ideas, develop clear explanations, and support comparisons with reasoning.
• Understanding Regulation and Public Policy – The activity encourages evaluation of legal, social, and ethical implications across time periods.
• Evidence-Based Reasoning – Students use historical knowledge to make accurate, logical comparisons.

Instructional Benefits

• Teacher-Created Resource – Designed by educators to align with upper-elementary ELA and social studies standards.
• Promotes Critical Thinking – Requires students to synthesize information and draw meaningful connections across history.
• Develops Writing Skills – Emphasizes clear paragraph structure, explanation, and use of evidence.
• Flexible Classroom Use – Ideal for independent writing, discussion-based lessons, assessments, or enrichment.
• Low-Prep Printable – Ready for classroom or homeschool use with minimal preparation.

This Modern Comparison worksheet helps students understand the relevance of historical events like Prohibition to contemporary policy debates. By analyzing similarities and differences, learners strengthen analytical thinking, historical reasoning, and written communication while connecting past context to modern issues of regulation and personal freedom.

This worksheet is part of our Prohibition Era Worksheets collection.