Linking Existing Knowledge to New Information

Verizon advertises they are, “America’s largest and most reliable 3G network,” with unlimited coverage, fewer dropped calls than other networks, and wireless service worldwide. But what does all this mean and how does hitting the “SEND” button allow you to hear your friend who lives hundreds of miles away? You don’t need to know the mystery behind how a cell phone works, you just trust the process.

The same holds true for reading. You don’t need to know how your eyes remember these squiggly lines on the page. Just trust the FLIRT, DRIVE, and RELAX process to connect new information to existing knowledge.

Your mind is like the Verizon commercial. It has billions of neurons working together as a network, making sure the message gets through. Just as the Verizon commercial tries to make the invisible network visible, you can make the network of your thinking visible by writing down your thoughts before, during, and after reading.

As you FLIRT with the text, your mind scrolls through your schema, locating the information you already know about the genre, topic, and author. Write down whatever comes to mind. It doesn’t matter if each idea is relevant to the topic. If you knew everything about the topic, you wouldn’t need to read the text. The important part of the FLIRT process is priming your mind or activating those Velcro hooks so new information can be sent along the proper frequencies.

As you begin to DRIVE your mind through the text, make sure to highlight, talk to the text, and draw pictures to keep your mind active and engaged. You don’t want any dropped calls as your neurons try to talk to each other. Talking to the text is just like typing out a text message in your cell phone. Stop often and ask your mind, “Can you hear me now?” If your mind is distracted, it could interfere with the message you are trying to relay.

The RELAX stage is like hitting the “SEND” button on your cell phone. This final step moves you beyond just “soaking up facts” to building and adjusting existing schema. Cognitive researchers call this process synthesizing. Synthesizing is when you take new information and combine it with existing knowledge. In other words, your mind is consistently comparing new information to your previous memories. As a result, RELAX enables your mind to shifting and rearranging the connections in your schema. (See I Already Know for more information on assimilation, accommodation, and elimination.) Summarizing the new information isn’t enough. Take time to allow your working memory to manipulate the new information so that it can be organized and stored in a meaningful way.

When you FLIRT, DRIVE and RELAX, the cells in your mind connect and you become smarter. And SMART is the best wireless service around!

If you want to extend your learning about how a cell phone was invented or why it’s called a “cell phone” and not a “cordless phone”, explore the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone#History