4. Decide how students will obtain and organize necessary information. If you are going to have students relate known material to other known material, then you may need only to review or to have students generate some of the critical attributes of the content. If you would like your students to use any new material in their metaphorical activity, then you must provide them with it. In the series of moves known as making the strange familiar, for example, the teacher provides students with information about whatever “strange” material students are to relate to familiar material. For example, if a biology teacher wants to introduce the circulatory system by having students compare it to a railroad, then the teacher might need to provide a handout showing and describing the parts of the circulatory system or introduce relevant information in a presentation.
Finally, you may need to provide an organizer for students to arrange the information they will use metaphorically. For a sample organizer used during a Metaphorical Expression lesson, see Figure 10.1,p. 135.
5. Select a format for the presentation of students’ ideas. Students need opportunities to demonstrate what they know and understand as a result of their metaphorical thinking. An appropriate synthesis task is to have students generate and explain their own metaphors in any variety of formats. Possible formats include a written description, a poem, a visual representation, an essay, an art project, an oral presentation, and so on.