connect the dots

When I was in school it was easy for me to memorize lots of information, but then I would try to make sense out of it on my own.  It took me a long times sometimes to do that--even in to my adulthood.  I am still making connections with stuff--especially in science now as I am teaching it.  My whole idea behind teaching is to help the kids make those connections now between the bits, or dots, of information they may be gathering.  The other day I was doing a lesson on the metric system since we will use that a lot in science.  Now it doesn't seem like most of my kids had ever used it before.  I had assumed that they had had some exposure to it.  I started off like they had some background knowledge in it and then had to back track.  One class I was explaining it and I could see the "ah ha" moment when a connection was made.  This chill hit me--I was really teaching and getting through to some of them.  Obviously that way of showing the information didn't impact everybody that same and I will need to revisit the material.  But for that one moment, with that one student or two, I helped connect the dots.