Ten Tools for Teaching for Transfer

http://tinyurl.com/transferlearning

Hugging: Making the learning experience more like the ultimate applications. Students do and feel something more like the intended applications.	Bridging: Making conceptual connections between what's learned and other applications. This is more cerebral, less experiential. Students generalize and reflect.
1. Setting expectations: Simply alert learners to occasions where they can apply what they are learning directly, without transformation or adjustment. Example: "Remember, you'll be asked to use these pronouns correctly in the essay due at the end of the week."	6. Anticipating applications: Ask students to predict possible applications remote from the learning context. Example: After students have practiced a thinking skill or other skill, ask, "Where might you use this or adapt it? Let's brainstorm. Be creative." List the ideas and discuss some.
2. Matching: Adjust the learning to make it almost the same experience as the ultimate applications.Example: In sports, play practice games. In drama, full costume rehearsals.	7. Generalizing concepts: Ask students to generalize from their experience to produce widely applicable principles, rules, and ideas. Example: After studying the discovery of radium, ask, "What big generalizations about scientific discovery does the discovery of radium suggest? Can you support your generalizations by other evidence you know of?"
3. Simulating: Use simulation, role playing, acting out, to approximate the ultimate applications. Example:Simulated trials, simulated senate discussions, etc., as preparation for understanding and participating in government as a citizen.	8. Using analogies: Engage students in finding and elaborating an analogy between a topic under study and something rather different from it. Example: Ask students to compare and contrast the structure of the human circulatory system with the structure of water and waste services in a city.
4. Modelling: Show, demonstrate rather than just describing, discussing. Example: A math teacher demonstrates how a problem might be solved, "thinking aloud" to reveal inner strategic moves.	9. Parallel problem solving: Engage students in solving problems with parallel structure in two different areas, to gain an appreciation for the similarities and contrasts. Example: Have students investigate a (nonsensitive) problem in their home environment and a study problem in school, using the same problem solving strategy. Help them to draw out the parallels and differences.
5. Problem-based learning: Have students learn content they are supposed to use in solving problems through solving analogous kinds of problems, pulling in the content as they need it. Example: Students learn about nutritional needs under different conditions by planning the menu for a desert trek and a long sea voyage, getting nutrition information out of their texts and other sources as they work.	10. Metacognitive reflection: Prompt and support students in planning, monitoring, and evaluating their own thinking. Example: After a quiz or indeed any thought-demanding activity, have students ask themselves, "What went well, what was hard, and how could I handle what was hard better next time?"

These ideas are drawn from How to Teach for Transfer by Robin Fogarty, David Perkins, and John Barell, Palatine, Illinois: Skylight Publishing, 1