To associate; make a logical or causal connection.
Relating lessons to real life can be a challenging task for a farang, obviously for the fact that we don't know enough about the culture or the lifestyle to make these connections, but also because of the communication issues. Often, students just don't understand, no matter how much you explain things to them. However, because of the complexity of some of the science concepts, it is imperative that this must be done.
Together with using students as examples and drawing on the board, linking concepts to children's lives make the concepts that much more tangible.
Going back to the example on heredity...
In my lesson on traits, I had asked my students to bring in a recent family photo to observe similarities between their facial features and their parents'. I set up the classroom ideally for a discussion regarding traits, and, using their photographs as examples, I engaged them in a discussion of what each child had in common with his or her parents.
Their responses were predictable, but the light bulb moment for many of them definitely came when Sonya (pictured above), one of my students whose dad was Caucasian and mom a Thai, showed the class a picture of her family. It was then that the students understood -- features such as eye and hair colour, and nose and mouth shape, are passed on from parents to offspring in different combinations. Sonya's sister reinforced the fact that the traits are random and the combinations are varied, which explains why they look different.
"To me, education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul."
- Muriel Spark
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