Give students simplified overviews at the beginning of a course - even if that means explaining things slightly inaccurately - to avoid confusing students.
- Once they have a good foundation it’ll be easier to build more detail into their understanding.
- So many textbooks jump straight to the deepest level of detail, don’t feel pressured to do the same.
- It can be better to explain something that is almost right to help students understand a topic better.
- Often we don’t explain things this way because they are "wrong" but that’s doing a disservice to the students. You can get into more detail later.
- When you teach something "wrong" say, "Look, understand that what I am going to teach you, there are huge arguments that exist over this, there are people in the development community who think you’re not using the right word for it. These arguments happen whether you use the right word or not. The most important thing is that you understand how to use these tools."