How students organize knowledge influences how they learn and apply what they know.

Reveal and enhance knowledge organization

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• Show "big picture" organizational structure of course ?? how key concepts of class inter?relate ?? and refer to this structure explicitly over the semester.
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• Have students draw a concept map. This will illustrate not only their prior knowledge but how they are organizing it.
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• Have students complete a sorting task (e.g., sort different problems, concepts, or situations into categories).
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• Pay attention to the patterns of errors to see if a student is consistently misapplying a formula or strategy.
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• Have students work with multiple organizational structures by asking them to categorize items in one schema and then another.