EXPLAIN YOURSELF!

Explaining abstract concepts can prove challenging to the best of educators for the best to the weakest of students/audiences.

Here's one wonderful example of the art and challenge of explaining. [My husband actually used this clip recently to describe the financial fiasco in Europe and Greece].  It's taken from Elaine May's movie A New Leaf in which she starred with Walter Matthau. In this YouTube clip Walter Matthau runs to his accountant after an important check of his bounced:

While entertaining in its own right, this use of the clip to explain Europe's financial fiasco brings up a few educational points:

• The power of a visual image to explain something (in this case finances or the importance of"capital");
• The power of learning life lessons from others' stories and experiences;
• The challenge of making an explanation meaningful and understood;
• The power of laughter and art in helping explain and retain information.

The challenge to explaining is that not only must you define a concept, you must somehow relate it to the audience/student.

• They have to not only understand the words you use, 
• They have to understand the intent, 
• They must understand how various factors interact with each other to create the "whole" of what is being explained, and 
• They have to be able to understand WHY what it is your are explaining is so important to them.

Richard Feynman (Nobel Laureate in physics) in his book, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character (1985) talks about an experience he had as a visiting lecturer teaching a master class of graduate students:

"I was teaching a group of students who would ultimately become teachers...in science...in electricity and magnetism - Maxwell's equation...I discovered a very strange phenomenon: I could ask a question, which the students would answer immediately.  But the next time I would ask the question - the same subject, and the same questions, as far as I could tell - they couldn't answer it at all....After a lot of investigation, I finally figured out that the students had memorized everything, but they didn't know what anything meant.  When they heard 'light that is reflected from a medium with an index' they didn't know that it meant a material such as water....Everything was entirely memorized, yet nothing had been translated into meaningful words. [Bold was my emphasis.]

This happens all too often. Without a teacher's careful questioning and relating that topic to their lives, teachers often think their students have "learned" because they could shoot back 'facts' or jargon, and as a result missed the opportunity to EXPLAIN underlying meanings, concepts, application.

To best explain something:

• The concepts must be related to ideas, names, places, things, students are already familiar with.  [Fractions or proportion, for example, can be explained watching a football game and figuring out 'first downs' ONLY to students who understand the underlying game.]
• The explanation must be broken down into simple, recognizable components;
• The use of images, pictures, graphs, charts all paired with words and explanations help students 'visualize' what you are explaining and provide additional paired memory associations. This is where teaching with graphic novels and illustrated texts can be prove extremely beneficial. This is also where the use of clips from favorite movies, cartoon, shows, can become powerful tools.
  
• "Play around" with the concept. Once something is explained,
•  ask your students/audience  HOW THEY think other things in their lives might relate to the concept, 
• how they can USE what they just learned,
• how it might be taken further and applied to something else...play around with it, take concepts for a walk, a swim, a jump. 
• You might, for example, ask them to write draw a cartoon or 'instructions' to explain the new concept to their friends or siblings.
• Bring emotions into it.  Ask how what was explained makes them 'feel' or ask for images what you just explained conjure up for them.  
• The more associations (visual, auditory, tactile, emotional, etc.) the greater the chance they will relate to it, understand it, and remember it.

 What are some of the tricks and tools you use to help explain something?  

Please leave your tricks, tools and impressions in the comments, and thank you for your visit. 

Before you leave... one more thing to keep in mind: