Principle 2: How students organize knowledge influences how they learn and apply what they know.
What you can do in the classroom |
Examples |
Reveal and enhance knowledge organization |
- Show "big picture" organizational structure of course -- how key concepts of class inter-relate -- and refer to this structure explicitly over the semester.
- Have students draw a concept map. This will illustrate not only their prior knowledge but how they are organizing it.
- Have students complete a sorting task (e.g., sort different problems, concepts, or situations into categories).
- Pay attention to the patterns of errors to see if a student is consistently misapplying a formula or strategy.
- Have students work with multiple organizational structures by asking them to categorize items in one schema and then another.
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Adapted from How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching (2010, Ambrose et al.)