Once I was teaching Linear Equations in Two Variables to a student. He was messing it up. He was adding x variable to y and vice versa. Then I was struck by this idea and I taught him as follows...
I asked him to recall any two brands of chocolates, say some S and T. Next I told him that he already has 3S + 4T and I give him 2S + 3T more. He immediately replied that he had 5S + 7T now. I now told him to review what he had actually done (he added brand S to S and T to T). That means he added the SAME quantities... which is the gyst of the whole mathematics that whatever operation you perform you can perform it only on SIMILAR quantities or things...
Now I turned to brand X and brand Y. Then slowly to just X and Y. Now he was able to both and subtract the equations. Though this was nothing very special but still I learnt a new thing that day, "CONNECT". IT'S NOT JUST A WORD. It is something greater than that...just connect whatever you are teaching to his daily experience and he understood it all..
That day itself I applied my newly formed " THEORY" to testing!!!!!
Next I was to tell him how to subtract 4 from 3
i.e. 3 - 4 = -1
and it worked... what I just did was I connected "-" (minus sign) with loan or debt(UDHAAR) and the kid got the concept within 4 minutes and 5 examples.
That was the time I felt yes I did something differently and it worked...
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