You can see from Fatmata’s experience above how it is possible to put ideas and facts in place without necessarily immediately showing the connections. An explanation can be more powerful if the connections are made slowly, rather as a detective puts the clues together to solve a crime.
As you move into a topic, the students may make connections themselves — always the most effective way of learning. By not providing connections too soon, you allow the process to happen. The students can do this together, in pairs or groups, as a “community” of learners. But you can only allow a limited amount of time for this. If you have to go further into the explanation, then remember that there are four essential features when explaining concepts:
For example, if you imagine you were teaching something about insects, the four essential features might be as follows:
| Attributes: |
Must have six legs, head, thorax, abdomen, two antennae, and wings. |
| Examples: |
Examples – beetle, wasp
Not examples – scorpion (arachnid), snail (gastropod) |
| Rules: |
Insects have six legs, a head, thorax and abdomen, two antennae and two or four wings |
It is really helpful to listen to other teachers when you are thinking about the best way to explain things. What stories do they tell? What images do they bring up? What jokes do they tell? Studies of good teachers show that they develop a rich repertoire of ideas and methods that they draw on when explaining things. All teachers need to develop similar strategies.
Read the account below, which describes how one teacher thought carefully about interesting ways to begin her explanation of a new topic.