We all want our students to learn deeply, but what does that look like? Understanding must be earned by the learner through active mental manipulation of higher order thinking skills. In our information saturated world, teachers are no longer dispensers of information, but rather we need to become facilitators of helping students to understand information by directing active meaning making.

Some thinking skills to guide our lessons should include conceptualizing, note creating/summarizing, compare/contrast, reading comprehension, predicting, visualizing, and perspective/empathizing. These thinking skills encapsulate the essentials of good thinking, they separate high achievers from the rest, they are under taught and undervalued, and finally they give teachers a simple way to increase student achievement and success. These vital thinking skills need to be a part of our everyday lesson instruction because they help students deepen their understanding of content, and they are transferable skills that students can use throughout school and into their work life.

Let’s talk about compare and contrast note taking skills in this blog post. First and foremost, we as teachers know that comparing is a foundational thinking skill for students and is the foundation to learning more complex thinking such as problem solving, argumentation, and decision making. Basically, teaching students HOW to compare and contrast leads to huge gains in achievement. This is due to the fact that when students compare and contrast first, they are more likely to apply their learning to new situations. That is what real learning is, right?

Well, it is how we teach them to compare that matters most. Comparing is a natural human skill, but to use it to compare at a high level takes a good teacher with know how. Some of the trouble our students were having include rushing and writing surface level comparisons, trouble sorting their ideas, not thinking deeply about the implications of the comparisons, and lastly, not transferring their learning to new situations.

Ugh, anyone else having the same issues? Here are some tips that have worked in our classrooms.

Before you have your students take on complex ideas or items in this graphic organizer, try simple comparisons like hamburger/hotdog, knife/fork, dog/cat, soccer/hockey, etc. Then move on to comparing presidents or math equations, etc. Then give students clear perimeters of what ideas to compare based on the topic like key accomplishments or challenges.We love to use our Describe and Compare Notes. Making students describe before they even begin comparing is the secret to moving students to deep level comparisons to make them more strategic thinkers.

Since all students need continued practice with anything, we also love to use our Top Hat Notes. These notes help students to organize their thoughts in a much deeper fashion than Venn diagram graphic organizers. The problem with Venn diagrams is that there is never enough room to equally record similarities and differences. The Top Hat note structure alleviates that issue by giving students plenty of space to compare and contrast. Another beneficial feature to Top Hat Notes is that students can line up important differences next to each other. This parallel note organization simply can’t be done with a Venn Diagram because the overlapping middle gets in the way.

Teaching Compare and Contrast Note Taking Skills