6 Ways to Build Background Knowledge

Background knowledge is a significant driving factor behind successful reading comprehension. Without it, readers struggle to make connections and grasp what they are reading. Students will come with different types of background knowledge, some more than others. This will be dependent upon many factors, such as:

  • How language-rich the student’s home environment is (the books read to that student and discussions with caregivers)

  • The access students have had to places such as museums, libraries, and other hands-on learning destinations to develop new knowledge and make connections

  • Extracurricular and enrichment activities

  • Opportunities for travel

  • Exposure to other cultures

The above are variables that we cannot control, so we focus on what we CAN control to build a sturdy framework of background knowledge. Here are my favorite ways for helping students build background knowledge regardless of their socioeconomic background:

  1. Read Alouds

    Read Alouds using picture books with authentic visual information is a powerful way to pack knowledge and information about a new topic.

  2. Field Trips

    Whether virtual or in-person, field trips are fantastic ways to learn about and engage in new topics. Since the pandemic, there is more opportunity now than ever to explore places, history, topics with a click of a mouse, and interact with guides and experts in the field.

  3. Guest Speakers

    Guest speakers can range from a child’s family member in a specific field of interest or relevance to someone in the local community.

  4. Show and Tell with Intention

    This isn’t the type of show and tell done in the early grades. This type of show and tell is done with a specific intention using an explicit outline to follow. The student would prepare an “expert presentation” about the item’s relevance, and facilitate a Q&A to further engage peers in discussion.

  5. Informational and Appropriate Media

    Whether it be a musical performance, famous speech, photographs or other piece of art, or short video, we can use the good that media does have to offer to connect our students with critical background knowledge.

  6. Sensory Experiences

    Engage students’ senses to connect more deeply with topics. Studying coconuts? Bring one in to explore. Learning about medicinal plants? Bring in an aloe plant!

Background knowledge should always be presented with rich, academic vocabulary that students become fluent in, both receptively and expressively.

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Sentence Scooping as a Fluency Tool

Fluency is more than just reading at a certain speed. A fluent reader will read smoothly at an appropriate rate with accuracy and prosody. A slow speed and / or choppy reading, lack of expression, inability to acknowledge the function of punctuation, and incorrectly grouping words and phrases within a sentence, will also contribute to inadequate comprehension of the text.

That last piece — incorrectly grouping words — can really make or break a student’s overall flow, and thus, ability to comprehend what he or she has read. This is where scooping comes in. Scooping is the ability to appropriately chunk — or group — words and phrases to produce a smoother and more meaningful reading of the text. While scooping can be implemented successfully with younger readers, this tool is particularly helpful for older students who are reading more complex sentences and will not benefit from pointing to each word in simple sentences. They must learn to scoop. First, they will learn to do it with a visual, but eventually, they will do it automatically, reaching their goal of fluency.

Here is an example of a compound sentence with scooped phrases. While you do not have to, it can be helpful in the introductory stages of scooping instruction to have students use a different color for each scoop. However, using different colors for each scoop WILL be beneficial when text within a scoop is split between lines. You may also use just two different color and alternate between them. Once the scoops are drawn, students may initially use their finger to “swoop each scoop” as they read, paying attention to punctuation more closely, and adding expression.

When introducing this method, you may choose to use the gradual release of responsibility model, a structured method that aims to provide the student responsibility of the content taught in gradual steps until they are capable of completing the task independently. In this case, after you have explained the concept of scooping, you would take these steps:

  1. YOU scoop a sentence to model how it’s done.

  2. YOU AND THE STUDENT work on scooping a sentence together.

  3. THE STUDENT scoops a sentence independently.

With practice of this strategy, students will be able to focus on one scoop at a time, making the text more conducive for fluent reading. With even more practice, students will not need to mark the scoops, as they will be able to do this with automaticity and arrive one step closer to a goal of fluent reading.

One quick note about scooping and fluency: For scooping to be effective, students must have strong phonological awareness. They must be able to decode and have a proficient awareness of phoneme-grapheme relationships. Without this fundamental base, scooping will not be a useful tool yet.

Looking for more ways to work on fluency at the upper level? I created these monthly fluency sets (available as a bundle or individually) to support students working towards fluency (and comprehension) with complex sentence structures, multisyllabic words, and tier 2 vocabulary. These texts are a few sentences and bridge the transition from sentence level fluency to longer passage fluency.

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The Power of Pictures in Picture Books

After sending out my last newsletter discussing the flaws of the 3 cueing system and how to implement change, I received a number  of emails asking about the role of pictures. Aren’t they important? How are they important? How can they bring meaning to the text?

Pictures should never be used to guess a word. That’s what explicit phonics instruction is for. But pictures have the ability to support reading in other powerful ways. In this post, I’m going to discuss three ways pictures are a powerful part of the reading experience.

  1. Pictures enhance comprehension. Once a word is decoded, the picture can elevate the meaning of the word. In my last newsletter I wrote about a student who couldn’t figure out the word “ferry” in a leveled reader because a) he didn’t have the phonics knowledge to do so, and b) had never been exposed to that word before, so looking at the picture didn’t even help him. Once he was given the tools to efficiently decode the word, he was able to use the picture of the ferry in the text to gain a better idea of this word’s meaning. In addition to supporting vocabulary comprehension, pictures can support other areas of comprehension, such as visualizing the story’s flow and plot structure, better understanding a character’s emotional states and reactions, and referencing inferences and predictions.

  2. Pictures add to the storyline. In some stories, pictures provide clues and information that aren’t in the text. They may show another perspective that isn’t narrated. They act as hidden features that add to the storyline.

  3. Pictures tap into readers’ imaginations. Detailed illustrations allow readers’ minds to roam — to wonder and wander, and to wish. They invite readers to exercise their imaginations. They encourage readers to ask questions that they might not have had without the visual images, and explore places they never could have imagined before.

  4. Pictures evoke emotional connections, responses, and reactions. Have you ever been pulled in by the illustrations of a book, or experienced an emotional reaction or response because of its pictures? Pictures can add a certain mood to the story.

Readers should be encouraged to interpret the pictures alongside the text - to examine, observe, notice, and question — to use the pictures as a tool to deepen their understanding and experience of the story and its characters. Next time you are introducing a reader to a picture book, make sure to save extra time for exploring the role of the pictures. Here are a few topics to discuss when reflecting on the role of pictures in books.

  • Patterns or common themes incorporated by the illustrator

  • New information that is represented in the pictures that is not conveyed in the writing

  • How the reading of the book might have been different without the pictures - would you have missed out on important information offered only through the visual component?

  • The ways in which the pictures help bring deeper understanding of the elements of the story: characters, setting, plot, etc…

  • Emotional responses or moods drawn out by the pictures

What are some of your favorite picture books, and how do their illustrations enhance the story?

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