{"id":20955,"date":"2023-01-10T11:25:33","date_gmt":"2023-01-10T16:25:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/cfc\/?p=20955"},"modified":"2023-01-10T16:44:27","modified_gmt":"2023-01-10T21:44:27","slug":"small-teaching-connecting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/cfc\/blog\/2023\/01\/10\/small-teaching-connecting\/","title":{"rendered":"Small Teaching: Connecting"},"content":{"rendered":"

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4th post of 9 in the Small Teaching Series<\/p>\n

Small Teaching<\/strong>\u00a0by J.M. Lang presents methods for making small changes in your teaching practices (hence the name) that can significantly improve your students\u2019 learning. Each chapter provides the research-based evidence behind the practices Lang proposes so you can have confidence that Lang\u2019s ideas work. The Coulter Faculty Commons will be boiling the Small Teaching chapters down into blog posts to provide instructors with concepts they can apply to a lesson, a class, or a course.<\/p>\n

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Retrieving, Predicting, and Interleaving are all small teaching lessons that offer opportunities to help students acquire Knowledge<\/strong>. The next three lessons will focus on developing students’ Understanding<\/strong>, to help you foster active learning moments in your classroom. This post addresses using Connection<\/strong> to increase student understanding.<\/p>\n

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Far too often students have knowledge that exists in separate boxes from prior learning. Getting these discrete bits of collective knowledge to have relevance to each other and helping students to find meaning in their relationship is a difficulty for many educators. As an expert in your field, you have a dense network of neural connections between skills, facts, and concepts. It may be easy for you to slot new information into a fully developed network seeing connections with it and \u201cdozens of other things [you] know\u201d (Lang, p. 93). Your novice students may lack the abundance of connections, and consequently comprehension, with information as individual pieces that exist in certain contexts.<\/p>\n

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\u201cNeurons form new connections with one another with every new experience we have: new sensations, new thoughts, new actions.\u201d<\/h2>\n

(Lang, p. 94)<\/p>\n

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Building comprehension consists of helping students build interconnected networks of knowledge with other ideas, concepts, and information. With no ability to force students’ brains to make connections, our role is to create an environment that facilitates the formation of connections. Lang (2016) suggests the following tips to help enhance the connections students make:<\/p>\n