Chapter 5
Synthesizing
In order to strengthen and condition students' minds, we must help them recognize relationships and connections. Seeing potential connections between two concepts comes naturally to a group of people I call “the synthesizers.” The synthesizers I know have no trouble looking at two seemingly unrelated things and recognizing the value they have to one another. You probably have a synthesizer or two in your class right now. They are not necessarily the highest achievers, but they are likely the best networkers. They bring out the value in others and elevate learning for everyone. With the right strategies and a fair amount of practice, anyone can learn to be a synthesizer.
When I was first introduced to the unbelievably talented public art consultant, Che Anderson, I was surprised to learn that he was not, nor has he ever been, an artist. Anderson is a key organizer of multiple arts festivals, including the POW! WOW! International Mural Festivals, The Governors Ball Music Festival, and the BLKOUT Walls Festival. In addition, he has led collaborative initiatives with a long list of brands such as Nike, Puma, Sprite, and Samsung. Anderson's value hinges on recognizing talent, building relationships, and connecting compatible creatives with one another. He is a legend of the public art world, but it is rare he ever wields a can of paint.
I have never met anyone better at forging relationships with creatives than Anderson. I've heard many of the biggest street artists in the world sing his praises. As a volunteer at a POW! WOW! Festival in 2019, I found myself 30 feet up on a lift, priming a brick wall with Mississippi muralist Michael “Birdcap” Roy. “He might not be an artist, but he lives in our world,” Roy (2019) told me of Anderson. “He has the respect of this community because we know we couldn't do what we love if we didn't have organizers like Che to take care of everything else.”
Anderson is no stranger to municipal permits, social media engagement, volunteer coordination, and general hobnobbing. He makes sure artists like Birdcap can just show up and paint. Moreover, Anderson has established a complex network of knowledge about what it takes to plan and execute a festival. When he meets a new artist, scouts a new city, or courts a new sponsor—he simply slots the fresh information into place. Anderson is a professional synthesizer.
Malcolm Gladwell has another word for synthesizers; he calls them connectors. In his debut book The Tipping Point, Gladwell compares connectors to a computer network. Connectors feel comfortable making introductions among people from different social, economic, cultural, and professional circles. They see intersections as opportunities and thread ideas, concepts, and individuals together that might never otherwise cross.
Just as Che Anderson has never been a master painter, your students do not have to be mathematicians or Nobel Prize winners to establish a vast network of organized connections. Explicitly teaching students to determine main ideas, create concept maps, and fill in a framework will make them better synthesizers both in and outside of your class. Synthesis also lends itself to peer learning opportunities. Together, your students will build rich and productive networks of knowledge to take on the real world.
WHAT'S THE THEORY?
Allow me to oversimplify a complex subject here, if only for a few sentences, as we pause to appreciate what a tremendous privilege it is to change children's brains. There are two ways in which people learn. We can form new neuronal networks in our brains or modify the existing ones. Biologist James Zull estimates the brain has 100 million neurons, all of which “make friends easily” (2002, p. 96). Each new sensation, action, and thought produces a fresh connection in your neuronal network. The more you repeat that experience, the more defined the pathway becomes. A piece of knowledge that you reflect on and apply over various contexts will form connections to many neuronal networks in your brain. Maybe a song or a funny YouTube video reminds you of the information just learned, and bingo—you are connecting and synthesizing the two exposures to the information and creating a pathway. Each new use of that information adds another layer of the relationship until you achieve understanding.
Most synthesizers possess a strong working memory. In Chapter 1, I mentioned that a mature working memory, no matter how strong, can generally hold four new pieces of information at once. The difference between individuals with strong working memories and weak working memories is that a strong working memory can hold four robust pieces of information surrounded by a lot of context. That context is derived from prior knowledge held in the learner's long‐term memory. A weak working memory has a much more difficult time establishing context and therefore struggles to move information from the working memory to the long‐term memory.
In the book Uncommon Sense Teaching: Practical Insights in Brain Science to Help Students Learn, authors Barbara Oakley, Beth Rogowsky, and Terry Sejnowski describe the working memory as a four‐armed octopus (2021). The octopus, more accurately a quadropus, can juggle four balls at once. If the octopus gets distracted, or tries to juggle too many balls at once, balls will fall to the ground—escaping the working memory. Retrieval practice makes the octopus a more skillful juggler. Once the information is well practiced and secured in the long‐term memory, the octopus can begin juggling bigger and heavier balls of information. Oakley, Rogowsky, and Sejnowski remind us that the long‐term memory has a vast capacity. “People's real problem with memory isn't how much they can store,” they contend. “It's getting the information into or out of memory” (2021). They liken our brains to a music streaming service with millions upon millions of songs—our long‐term memories help us locate the songs we are looking for by forming and organizing connections. The easier it becomes to retrieve the information we are looking for, the more connections we are able to make.
How People Learn, a 2000 publication of the National Research Council, compares the modification of neuronal networks to an artist chiseling a sculpture. “The nervous system sets up a large number of connections; experience then plays on this network, selecting the appropriate connections and removing the inappropriate ones.” As you increase the number of relevant connections and help students synthesize information by identifying relationships, the sculpture becomes clearer. It is possible for existing networks to cause misinterpretations, but small teaching will help you to chisel away poor connections and replace them with rich new networks for learning.
In education, our goal is to help students build rich and overlapping frameworks of knowledge in each of the content areas. An ability to synthesize multiple frameworks allows students to connect and organize information for efficiency and application. As teachers, we help them learn to make connections for themselves. Experts make more connections than novices, so our job is to help facilitate deep synthesis of information across many contexts. Unfortunately, we cannot fire the synapses in our students' brains for them. They have to synthesize the information on their own in a way that makes sense to them.
According to How Learning Works: 7 Research‐Based Principles for Smart Teaching, the difference between experts and novices often hinges on “the number or density of connections among the concepts, facts, and skills they know” (Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, and Norman, 2010, p. 49). A novice's web of understanding contains holes that inevitably impact comprehension. On the contrary, an expert is capable of weaving new information into a fibrous canvas of connections, which then become more stable and more easily activated in multiple contexts. The more an expert can tie newly acquired facts to previous knowledge, the easier it becomes to apply their knowledge in fresh ways.
That said, please never make the assumption that your students lack all prior knowledge of something you are attempting to teach them. Intelligence is malleable. Trust that as soon as you introduce a new concept, their brains will begin searching for connections in an attempt to synthesize whatever they already know with whatever you are telling them. Similar to prediction, activating prior knowledge will give you a better idea of misconceptions and realistic entry points for the children sitting in front of you.
IN SHORT
- The more an experience is repeated, the more defined it will become in your long‐term memory.
- Every time you use a piece of information in a new way, you are creating a new point of connection in your long‐term memory.
- The working memory can hold up to four new pieces of information at one time. As they are transferred to the long‐term memory, the working memory becomes capable of holding bigger and more robust chunks of new information.
- The long‐term memory is vast; space is not an issue. The real challenge is organizing enormous amounts of information to make it easily accessible on demand.
- Possessing prior content knowledge will help a learner to master a new skill more easily, even if it is a content‐neutral skill.
- Experts have a dense network of connections in their long‐term memories while novices have holes in their network that need to be filled in.
- As soon as a new piece of information is introduced, the brain begins searching for relevant connections in the long‐term memory.
MODELS
In Massachusetts, where I teach, the state test began requiring students to write their open response essays based on two sources rather than one in 2015. Pretty soon, everyone became obsessed with the term synthesis. It was no longer enough to provide text evidence from multiple readings; students needed to establish a relationship between the readings if they wanted to earn top marks.
I recently had a conversation with the English Department Head in my building, Kerry Trotto, to ask her how she handled the shift with her students. She told me her lifeline had been a text called Notice & Note: Strategies for Close Reading by Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst (2012). “At the time, our entire teaching faculty completed a book study focused on the ‘Notice and Note’ signposts in order to create common reading strategies used throughout the building rather than just in English classes,” Trotto (2021) recalled. “This book study allowed teachers to use the same bank of reading strategies and common language in classes so that students could practice the strategies with a variety of texts throughout all content areas.”
In addition, Trotto expressed gratitude for professional development on the Self‐Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) writing program. “In the same manner as the reading strategies and terms, another set of common language and strategies was created for all teachers to use with their students for writing tasks,” she said. “The addition of the SRSD strategies was helpful for teaching students to synthesize two texts by following the routines of the program.” Students became accustomed to engaging in “self‐talk,” a process we explored at length in Chapter 2. They also practiced pulling apart writing prompts strategically to figure out what the question required them to do. “Students were taught how to write a HOT introduction paragraph that included a hook, overview, and thesis,” shared Trotto. “Emphasis was put on writing a strong thesis statement that we referred to as the ‘heart of the essay’.” With the use of common reading and writing strategies across all classes, she found the shift toward synthesizing two texts took place for most students with relative ease.
Synthesis comes naturally to some students, but I find that many of my high achievers have the most difficult time making the adjustment. It turns out, being able to recall every state capital off the top of your head does not equate to crafting an in‐depth analysis of a state capital's assets based on multiple primary sources. You get the idea. Memorization only takes you so far.
Synthesis should be happening in your classroom year‐round. The five models included here will help students build connections and recognize relationships from the first day of school through their final report cards.
Synthesis Sentence Starters
In the Beers and Probst text recommended by my colleague Kerry Trotto, the authors recommend instituting “generalizable language” or “signposts” that can be repeated frequently and applied to many, if not all, texts (2012, p. 85). The standardized signposts include:
- Contrast and Contradictions: When a character acts in an unexpected way, pause and ask yourself, “Why would the character act this way?” Start your answer with, “As I think about this question, I wonder if it might be …”
- Aha Moment: When a character realizes something, ask yourself, “How might this change things?” Start your answer with, “Now that this character realizes this, I think that …”
- Tough Questions: When a character asks himself or a friend a difficult question, you get a glimpse of what is bothering him the most. Stop and ask yourself, “What does this question make me wonder about?” Start your answer with, “These questions he was asking himself make me think that …”
- Words of the Wiser: When an older or more experienced character shares advice, ask yourself, “What's the life lesson and how might it affect the character?” Start your answer with, “The important lesson offered here is that …”
- Again and Again: When you see repetition, something is important. You have to ask yourself, “Why does this keep happening again and again?” Start your answer with, “Here I see …”
- Memory Moment: The memory of the past can be used to explain the present moment. Stop and ask yourself, “Why might the memory be important? Start your answer with, “The memory seems important because …”
It is important to use consistent language in order to provide students with a common context through which to view connections. By hanging anchor charts around your classroom, learning becomes more visible. Anchor charts are large print, student‐generated reference posters that are easy to point to as a scaffold throughout the year. By asking students to create the charts themselves, they begin to feel a sense of ownership over the material as well as their physical learning space.
Aside from the Notice & Note signposts detailed earlier, the anchor chart I rely on most heavily is a list of synthesis sentence starters designed to help students craft their open responses. Given that synthesis does not come naturally to the vast majority of learners, I like to give students a jump start by encouraging them to use sentence starters such as:
- According to both …
- At first, I thought … but now I think … because …
- This makes me think of …
I know synthesis is taking place when students are able to take two or more concepts or sources and articulate a meaningful connection. When this language becomes ingrained in the majority of my students' responses, I can replace the synthesis anchor chart with something new. The students who are still struggling with synthesis receive their own copy of the sentence starters to tape inside their desk or on the back of their digital device.
Another great strategy for synthesis is the summary frame: “Somebody, wanted, but, so, then” (Beers, 2003). For example, to summarize Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling, I would write, “Voldemort wanted the Sorcerer's Stone, but Harry was determined to protect it, so he snuck to the forbidden third‐floor corridor, then he outsmarted his mortal enemy.” Different students are sure to come up with unique configurations.
Once students have mastered summarizing a single reading, you can ask them to use the “somebody, wanted, but, so, then” frame for two readings. For example, to synthesize Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone with The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, I could write: “Both heroes wanted to avenge their parents, but they needed to find a powerful tool, so they teamed up with friends and then returned victorious.” Here, the framing device is the same, but students are asked to consider two sources rather than one, thereby identifying significant connections and relationships in both texts.
The more an experience is repeated, the more defined it becomes in the long‐term memory. Therefore, instituting generalizable language with which students can consistently approach reading makes it easier for them to form important connections. Posting sentence starters and sentence frames throughout your classroom is the easiest way to reinforce the practice of synthesis.
Knowledge Dumps
The first “photo dump” I saw on Instagram came from Ariana Grande in December 2020. Grande announced her wedding engagement with a mirror selfie, some blurry outtakes of her fiancé on a hardwood floor, and a picture of a diamond ring perched on her tattooed finger. The New York Times's Styles Desk followed soon after with a “close reading” of the engagement that proclaimed, “In 2020, a year so hellish that the old rules of Instagram could no longer apply, a new format surged in popularity: the photo dump. … It's how Ariana Grande announced her engagement and also how most internet‐savvy celebrities have been posting for months now” (2020). Photo dumps flew in the face of highly curated Instagram feeds—a standard practice of the “before times.” Quarantine led to carousels of varied and mundane pandemic shots as we baked our sourdough loaves and learned to tie‐dye at home.
Photo dumps feel more intimate and revealing than the staged posts of our pre‐pandemic lives because they provide a random collection of images, not a curated one. As a result, it's up to the viewer to synthesize the images on their own. Everyone who views the same photo dump can draw their own conclusions, create their own unique interpretation, and generate their own synthesis.
Knowledge dumps do the same, asking students to share everything they know (or think they know) about a topic before you teach them. Prior knowledge can then be reinforced, and misconceptions can be squashed.
Like the carousel feature on Instagram that allows users to post 10 photos for their followers to swipe through, I conduct carousels in my classroom. I post six pieces of chart paper throughout the room with broad guiding questions and distribute students among them. They begin by scrawling their answers on the chart paper in front of them and every couple of minutes, they rotate to the next piece of chart paper. Eventually, they circulate all the way around the room. Some teachers call this activity “chalk talk” and conduct the brain dump silently on the board, though I haven't seen an actual blackboard with chalk in over a decade. Once you process the knowledge your students dumped, you can allow the information you've collected to inform future instructional approaches.
Brain dumps can be used to teach everything from multiplication and division to good citizenship. I have found a lot of success with The KIDS (Kids Involved Doing Service Learning) Consortium activity for building an effective citizen. On the first day of class, students are split into groups and given silhouettes of various parts of a human body, including the head, hands, heart, and feet. The group members work together to populate each body part with a brain dump depicting the behaviors of an effective citizen. On the head, they might write, “Think before you speak” or “Do your research.” In the hands they might write, “Extends a helping hand” or “Hard working.” In the heart might write “Courageous” or “Proud.” And so on.
I can detect a lot from the effective citizen brain dump, including who my concrete and abstract learners are. Do they understand idioms? Can they assign symbolism? Have they received prior character education? By asking what they already know, I am able to tailor the course to my students' collective and individual needs. Likewise, students do their own valuable synthesis work of drawing conclusions and creating unique interpretations.
Finding the Main Idea
I lived in more than a dozen homes before graduating high school. Silver linings are few and far between when it comes to housing insecurity, but I did become a very good packer. I learned that if you put a book, a toothbrush, and a spatula in a box and label it “stuff,” you're going to have a hell of a time unpacking. It's much easier to fill a well‐labeled box for each room with similar items. This strategy, based on Keys to Literacy, is how I teach students to find the main idea.
I start with literal examples. “If I packed a blender, silverware, and a coffee mug in a box, what would I label it?” I ask them. Most kids catch on right away: “Kitchen!” Next, I move to more abstract examples. “If I put a slice of pizza, a pine tree, and the Eiffel Tower in a box, what would I label it?” It usually takes them longer to arrive at something suitable like “triangles.” Finally, I give them a label of my choosing and ask what they would put in the box. If I say, “Landforms,” they might respond with, “hills, volcanoes, and peninsulas.”
Practice Packing Boxes:
Label each box below by identifying the main ideas and details.
| Blender Silverware Coffee Mug Label: | Eiffel Tower Slice of Pizza Pine Tree Label: |
| 1. 2. 3. Label: Living Room | 1. 2. 3. Label: |
| Main Idea | Details |
| 1. 2. 3. | |
| 1. 2. 3. | |
| 1. 2. 3. | |
| 1. 2. 3. | |
| 1. 2. 3. | |
| 1. 2. 3. |
I rarely provide students with a completed copy of my notes or presentations. Once they get the hang of labeling main ideas, I begin providing them with a skeleton of my notes riddled with strategic blanks. The notes are split into two columns: main ideas and details, establishing a hierarchy of key concepts. This strategy helps them fill in the blanks in their neural networks and build accurate connections.
Similar to the knowledge dump technique, finding relationships among details to establish the main idea is a simple path to synthesis. As novice learners, I recognize they would likely struggle to organize their own notes into main ideas and details. By providing a structure for meaningful note‐taking, I can gradually release the responsibility until students are able to identify most main ideas and details on their own.
Concept Maps
At the end of a lesson or unit, I like to ask students to design a concept map. Google's free Jamboard platform is a great digital tool for concept mapping, but paper and pencil will work just fine. Concept maps look the way they sound, a visual web of main ideas and key details with connecting lines to represent relationships.
Concept maps are graphic representations, usually organized in a hierarchy, introducing the most general ideas at the top with increasingly specific details or concepts as one move's down the page. The map denotes relationships between various ideas, details, and concepts. Researchers Joseph D. Novak and Alberto J. Cañas praise the practice of concept mapping, noting, “There is still relatively little known about memory processes and how knowledge finally gets incorporated into our brain, but it seems evident from diverse sources of research that our brain works to organize knowledge in hierarchical frameworks and that learning approaches that facilitate this process significantly enhance the learning capability of all learners” (2008). Concept maps provide the brain with a template to begin moving new information from the working memory to the long‐term memory. Remember, the long‐term memory is vast; space is not an issue. The real challenge is organizing enormous amounts of information to make it easily accessible on demand.
Interviewed for Jennifer Gonzalez’s popular Cult of Pedagogy podcast, Amanda Cardenas recommends thinking of your concept map as a vision board. Cardenas is an English teacher and independent consultant based out of Chicago. “A unit vision board is a lesson planning tool that allows teachers to imagine their units as an experience and think through what it would feel like to be part of that experience,” explains Cardenas (2021). Cardenas provides an example in which she places the essential question in the center of a Google Slide, accompanied by a corresponding YouTube video, images, a color scheme appropriate to the tone of the unit, major themes, and the most significant anchor quotes from assigned reading. “Could I have accomplished this on our department issued spreadsheet?” she asks. “Sure. But a spreadsheet with bullets and columns is a little less … alive” (2021). I recommend creating your own concept map prior to asking your students to do the same.
Concept maps make great collaborative activities. I often ask students to choose among four roles in their groups: Main Ideator, Dr. Detail, Connector, and Discussion Leader. The Main Ideator generates a list of main ideas from the unit. Then, Dr. Detail records at least three details for each of the main ideas. The Connector draws lines to show the relationships between main ideas and details. The Discussion Leader keeps time and tracks the participation of all group members. In the end, we take a gallery walk to see what everyone else comes up with. Students post their maps throughout the room and take time to circulate, leaving comments on sticky notes for the other groups.
Asking a focused question to guide the concept map is an excellent way to get started. A social studies teacher might ask, “What were the positive and negative consequences of the American Revolution?” While, a science teacher might ask, “What's the difference between three types of matter?” Sorting main ideas and details on a concept map will build a denser network of connections and strengthen the synthesis of multiple topics or themes. By the end of the year, students should be able to turn your course syllabus into a concept map of its own.
The Minute Thesis
Jim Lang's approach to synthesis in his college literature courses benefits from an original strategy he calls, “The Minute Thesis.” At the end of each semester, Lang writes every title from his syllabus in one column on the board and a list of themes in a second column. Next, he asks a student to circle a single theme and draw connecting lines to at least two of the novels. Students have one minute to develop a thesis statement connecting the two novels to the theme. Fascinating new connections and relationships emerge in a class discussion for 5–10 minutes before he begins the process again with new selections.
Lang has implemented this activity in anywhere from 10‐minute chunks to an entire class period. Like many of the teaching strategies he champions, The Minute Thesis is free, easy, and appropriate for any class size. He recalls the first time he tried The Minute Thesis in the original edition of Small Teaching:
I wrote the name of the seven novels we had read on the board in a single column; in a second column, I wrote a list of themes that we had seen in various novels throughout the semester. I handed a marker to a student in the front row, asked her to walk up to the board and circle a single theme, and then asked her to draw lines connecting that theme to two different novels. Then I asked the students to spend 1 minute thinking about a thesis for an argument that would explain how those two novels connected to that theme. (2016)
Lang was impressed by the sophisticated thesis statements that emerged from his students. He hadn't previously thought to tackle the “mysterious process of coming up with new or original ideas” head on. The Minute Thesis helped Lang target a skill he had asked his students to apply constantly by writing papers, delivering presentations, and completing research projects. New and original ideas are most often just creative connections. “Playing the minute thesis demystifies the process of coming up with new connections,” Lang points out, “and gives the students a tool they can use in all of their classes when they are trying to brainstorm ideas for their assignments” (2016). After all, every time you use a piece of information in a new way, you are creating a new point of connection in your long‐term memory.
PRINCIPLES
Exercises in synthesis require you to throw your expert rope to novice students in order to help them identify relationships among multiple concepts. The easier it becomes for them to determine main ideas and compose summary statements, the simpler it will be for them to create their own connections to content. In like manner, the more prior content knowledge students possess in their long‐term memories, the easier it will be for them to apply new skills such as determining main ideas and composing summaries.
Provide the Framework
As a content expert, you are able to organize new information with ease. You can connect concepts and detect meaningful relationships within the complex neuronal network of your long‐term memory. New learners need a lot of help with organization. A strong and visible framework should clearly state goals, concepts, and materials for your unit. Refer to the framework frequently so students can begin to build networks of their own. The more familiar students are with your unit plan or syllabus, the easier it will become for them to fit new information into the frame.
Facilitate Synthesis
Even if students someday rise to your level of content expertise, their networks will look different than yours. The frame you have provided them with is filled with empty space for a reason. As they build their own connections and relationships, their learning grows deeper. Provide ample opportunity for students to establish surprising juxtapositions and explore new pathways between concepts.
Leverage Peer Learning
Synthesis is a natural outlet for collaborative group work because it requires relationship building. All of your students are novice learners, but together, they can forge new pathways by helping each other. Group work can be productive and energizing for students in addition to encouraging natural curiosity to flourish.
SMALL TEACHING QUICK TIPS: SYNTHESIS
Synthesizing two concepts is much more difficult than retrieving or memorizing a single piece of information. Devoting precious time to skills such as finding the main idea and summarizing may require an investment on your part, but students will reap the benefits in the long term. Learning to examine the relationship between multiple pieces of information contributes to deeper and longer‐lasting learning.
- Provide students with sentence starters and sentence frames to familiarize them with the language of synthesis. Post anchor charts throughout your classroom to make learning visible. Start with: “At first, I thought … but now I think … because …” Next, encourage students to write succinct summaries using a sentence frame such as “somebody, wanted, but, so then.”
- Pry for prior knowledge with a brain dump activity at the start of the unit to establish an entry‐point for students to begin synthesizing multiple concepts or sources.
- Ask students to answer a guiding question by creating a concept map made up of main ideas and details that connect to one another.
- Use a packing box to illustrate the process of finding the main idea. Students should learn to label a box filled with silverware, a blender, and plates: “kitchen.” Next, fill the box with details from a unit of study and see if they can determine how to label it.
- Use The Minute Thesis activity to help students recognize and create new connections prior to major assignments or exams.
CONCLUSION
As a master of synthesis, public art consultant Che Anderson has grown accustomed to asking the question, “Can it translate?” When making connections to grow his network, he has to gauge compatibility. What will happen when two artists, concepts, or resources collide? Will they enhance one another? I imagine Anderson like a telephone switchboard operator from the 1940s, toggling between wires to bring the right people together. “Someone might have gone to a great art school,” he told me, “But, that doesn't mean they will be able to translate their work into a mural” (Anderson, 2021).
You have probably experienced a diligent student like this in your classroom who has done the homework, but flounders when asked to connect it to something you taught earlier in the year. It is easy to look at the individual plots outlined by Author A, Author B, and Author C. It becomes much harder to establish a common theme among them. Novice learners rarely engage in synthesis without prompting the way you, as a content expert, likely do. The more information they move into their long‐term memories, the easier it becomes to make connections and synthesize new material.
Provide students with a concrete framework for learning and they will eventually begin to make connections among ideas, concepts, and texts. Encourage them to examine main ideas independently before trying to establish how two things are related. Sometimes allowing novice students to work in a group can illuminate connections even you, as the expert, could not see before.