Building Background Knowledge
Teachers must build and activate students' background knowledge--two of the most important things they can do to improve student understanding. The following examples of types of student engagement activities should not be limited to the lesson openers, but should be incorporated throughout lessons and units.
*Quickwrites, in which students write for a few minutes about an assigned topic. Writing on topic requires that they think and reflect about the topic.
*KWL charts, in which students share with one another what they know about a topic, what they want to know about that topic, and then what the learned about the topic at the end of the lesson
*KWL charts, in which students share with one another what they know about a topic, what they want to know about that topic, and then what the learned about the topic at the end of the lesson
*Anticipation Guides, in which students respond to several statements that challenge or support their preconceived ideas about key concepts in the text.
*Questions & Connections, in which students respond to what they read by writing:
- one main idea or an important idea in the section
- one question they have about what they read
- one connection they made between the reading and information they already knew.
*PREVIEW, in which students preview the text by looking at the text features, to make connections, discover facts, make predictions, and generate questions before reading.
*Give One-Get One, in which students brainstorm everything they know about a topic. Then they share and exchange ideas with other students in the class.
*Tea Party, in which students consider parts of the text before they actually read it. Students predict what they think will happen as they make inferences, compare and contrast, and draw on their prior experiences and understandings.
*Probable Passage, in which students are given a list of key words or terms from the text before they read it. They must sort the words into categories and make a prediction statement.