I would explain how to explain something complicated.
Imagine I sat you down and asked you to complete a jigsaw puzzle. How would you do it? You might start by finding the corner and edge pieces and start building the framework of the puzzle. Or, you could start with some easily identifiable sections and go from there - for example, all the blue pieces might make up the only lake in the picture.
Suppose, though, that you didn't have all the pieces in front of you, but I instead fed you each piece one by one in random order. It'd be extraordinarily difficult to put the puzzle together! You'd need to hold on to each piece, and hope that you can connect your new piece to one the older pieces you've stashed.
This is the way that most teaching is done, and it's wrong. When the teacher already understands the big picture it's easy to feed the learner each piece of the puzzle as is convenient, but it's extremely difficult for the learner to then hold on to each new tidbit of knowledge as he tries to put it all together.
You need to start by building a framework to use as a frame of reference, or start with something familiar to the learner to use as an anchor point from which to build from. If you can do both by building a framework using something which is familiar (as I've attempted to do here), extra kudos to you.
Imagine I sat you down and asked you to complete a jigsaw puzzle. How would you do it? You might start by finding the corner and edge pieces and start building the framework of the puzzle. Or, you could start with some easily identifiable sections and go from there - for example, all the blue pieces might make up the only lake in the picture.
Suppose, though, that you didn't have all the pieces in front of you, but I instead fed you each piece one by one in random order. It'd be extraordinarily difficult to put the puzzle together! You'd need to hold on to each piece, and hope that you can connect your new piece to one the older pieces you've stashed.
This is the way that most teaching is done, and it's wrong. When the teacher already understands the big picture it's easy to feed the learner each piece of the puzzle as is convenient, but it's extremely difficult for the learner to then hold on to each new tidbit of knowledge as he tries to put it all together.
You need to start by building a framework to use as a frame of reference, or start with something familiar to the learner to use as an anchor point from which to build from. If you can do both by building a framework using something which is familiar (as I've attempted to do here), extra kudos to you.
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