Linking to prior knowledge
When we present new learning to our students, we need to help them to link it with prior knowledge.
It’s essential to help our students to link what they already know with the new learning so that they understand what is being taught. This isn’t just useful – this is vital. Without these links, new knowledge is either filtered out or learnt by rote.
There are two main categories of making links with prior knowledge:
.
- Links to what has already been learned (if the topic is a follow-on from previous learning, like a different history topic or harder chemical reactions).
- Links to everyday experience (if the topic is new and the student has no academic prior knowledge, like the start of sociology).
Linking to the last lesson
One of the ways we can link new learning with what was learnt in the previous lesson is to use an Advance Organiser. This helps students to link the new material to the material covered in the previous lessons and to the big picture of the whole topic. Click here for more on Advance Organisers.
Linking to everyday experience
This is particularly good when we’re teaching something that our students’ haven’t studied before.
Anecdote
One teacher reported that her usual approach to teaching Health and Safety was met with bored indifference. The words didn’t immediately connect with the experience of her students. Instead she asked: “How did you keep healthy and safe on the way to college this morning?”. This created a buzz of discussion which got the students’ brains connected to what they already knew on the subject.
Activating prior knowledge
This means that you help students to activate their pathways of existing knowledge at the beginning of a topic or lesson. This gets the brain connected to the appropriate pathways as the lesson begins. There’s lots of examples of how to do this in the Step 1: Prior Knowledge section.
Linking using analogies and similes
Analogies, similes, and models are great for helping our brains to make links. These techniques provide physical links between existing and new knowledge, so they’re particularly effective. More on this below!
Linking back
It’s effective to make links after the new learning has been taught, as well as before you teach the new learning. One way you might do this is a technique called “bridging” which is used in Cognitive Acceleration. At the end of each lesson, you ask the students where else they can apply this new knowledge. While this specific question might not apply in all lessons, the idea of linking back is sound.
Linking to prior knowledge using similes and analogies
Most of us use similes and analogies (or even metaphors) without even noticing or even naming them. They are all ways to link the new knowledge we are teaching with something the student already knows.
They are useful to help students link something new to something they already know, so that they form a memory. Sometimes the link can be a difference: “Backstroke is like front crawl, but on your back”, or: “A bolt is like a screw, it has a thread and you turn it, but the thread goes into a nut, not wood.”
The key thing is that the thing you’re saying it is “like” must be well known to the learner.
Similes are saying one thing is like another.
- “As green as grass”.
- “Diesel is like petrol, but thicker”.
Analogies are longer and link similar processes.
- “The team worked together like a well-oiled machine.”
- “Trying to get Jim to do his homework is like trying to get the cat into a box”.
Metaphors simply leave out the ‘like’.
- “My teenage son has turned into a gorilla”.
- “We’re in a battle of ideas”.
When these are linked together into a longer story, they are called allegories or fables, and if they have a message, they may be called parables.
In a more general sense we can make links by saying things like: “You know when….” or “You remember when…”.
Activity 1: create your own analogies
For this activity, you’ll need the outline or textbook for a course that you’re teaching. You’re going to identify similes and analogies which you could use in the course to help your students to learn the material.
1. Pick some of the keywords from a topic you’ll be teaching. Find similes to explain them.
2. Now find a process (eg. colouring hair, using a chainsaw, writing a CV) and come up with an analogy for that.
3. Finally, think about if there are any physical models which would help your students learn the material.
Activity 2: using graphical methods to make links
Our students get all sorts of things muddled.
- Temporary and permanent hair colour.
- Mitosis and meiosis.
- Proton and electron.
- Concrete and mortar.
- Comma and apostrophe.
- Grove and rebate.
- Legislate and legalise.
The reason for the muddle is clearer when we see that memories share pathways and links with similar things. When our students get in a muddle, it’s because they’ve linked two things in their minds so they appear to be the same thing to them. Our job is to separate them.
For this we can either use a verbal or written route, for example: “Explain the difference between…”, or we can use a more graphical route as shown below. A good method to start with is a tickbox table with questions that the students fill in. An extension of this method is to create the questions through class discussion.
The table below is good for comparing two related things. For example: atom and solar system, king and Pope, concrete and mortar, sheet and halyard.
Pick two things from your course which learners need to differentiate. Use the table below to try out the technique.
Now plan the simplest possible task you could do with the students to give them practice.
Name 2 or three different pairs you could use.
Image credits
Header image: http://socialscholar.net/diversity-classroom-linked-workplace/
Activity image: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/215469163399087997/
Two students image: http://www.readingrockets.org/article/teaching-writing-diverse-student-populations