Making Connections.

  We all know how important it is for students to make connections to prior knowledge, to life and the world around them.  The other day, I realized I have to teach my students to learn to connect seemingly different things. 

The idea came from two sources.  The first is a book I'm reading called "Writing on the classroom wall" by Steve Wynborny who also does those Splat activities.  He said "Learning is about making connections." The other is my mother who talks about relatives and always includes the information of how they are related.  Always.

So I realized I needed to start getting my students thinking in terms of connections but that isn't easy because they've never had to think much in math till they got to my class.

I started this past Monday.  I wrote Steve's sentence on the board and explained we were going to spend the week tackling this.  So I used the warm-up for introducing this.  I love that it causes them to really think about what they are doing and I suspect they are doing some higher level, critical thinking.

This past Monday, I asked them to find the connection between two drawings.  They gave the surface answers like "It has a bunch of lines."  or  "They are both purple.".  I told them that is not a connection, that is a physical description.  After letting them struggle for a bit, I asked questions and got them to the solution of they are connected because of multiplication. 

The next day I asked them to explain how the moon and the oceans are connected. Many  of them googled it before writing down a complex answer on gravitational pull, etc.  Some discussed the size, some said I don't know.  I told them they are over thinking it.  One simple connection is all they need. Finally someone called out "tides".  I pumped my fist.  That was the break through point.  They started to look beyond the surface.  Some even started looking deeper.

Another time, I asked for a connection between music and cooking.  In addition to fractions, I got things like improvisation.  In jazz and in cooking you create your own "recipes" for the final product.  You have the guidelines to do it but you adjust and create something new within that frame work.

I had a few things like the tower of pisa and a can of coke.  They took to the internet to look up pictures so they could compare the two.  The universal conclusion was they are connected by their cylindrical shape.  Another was a clown and Rudolph.  Most everyone said the red nose but one girl said she was looking for a different connection.

This has been a great week doing it because my students are talking more, checking out the internet, and looking for those connections.  The next step is to start asking for connections in regard to the math I teach.  This is going to be much harder but it will happen if I take them through it a step at a time. 

It is going well and I like this better than my usual warm-ups because they are more involved and really thinking.  Let me know what you think.