Innovative and Creative Ways to Help Students Connect to the Already Existing Network of Ideas and Experiences

To help students make meaningful connections in mathematics, Coxford (1995) recommends that teachers do the following:

Think of and utilize possible unifying themes--such as chance, number, change, data, and shape--to draw attention to the connected nature of mathematics.
Bring to the surface mathematical connectors--such as algorithms (or procedures), functions, graphs, tranformations, and variables--in order that students see the use of one idea in many different situations.