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.

Come Join the MW LITERACY® Instagram Community

Sign up here for bite-sized doses of professional development delivered to your inbox each week.

The Power of Mnemonic Devices

A few years ago I was taking my kids to a local sports center for swim lessons. Admittedly, I don’t have the best sense of direction (the GPS, in my opinion, is one of the best inventions EVER). To get to this place, I needed to make a turn off of a busy (5-lane) main road onto another road. The turn happened at one of three gas stations clustered near one another along that road, but I needed to be ready and signal to get into the left turning lane so I wouldn’t miss the turn. Initially, I kept forgetting at which gas station that turn happened.

Mnemonic device to the rescue!

The gas station that I needed to turn at was a Shell station. A ha! Shells are by the water (ok, the beach – but still, the water). The pool is the water where the kids swim. This was my mnemonic device. Of course when I finally told my husband, he couldn’t stop laughing. Who cares? As I tell my students, if it works for you, THAT’S what matters.

Mnemonic devices are a fantastic way to remember important information, whether for everyday life (getting your kids to swim!) or for academic purposes. They are powerful tools — or tricks — that help you to recall or remind yourself of information with greater facility. They are especially beneficial for students with learning disabilities or working memory and other executive functioning challenges, but can and SHOULD be used to support every student’s learning. They encourage deeper engagement with the learning material and improved long-term memory of the content. And let’s face it, mnemonic devices can also be quite fun.

The top five way to incorporate mnemonic devices into daily life include:

  1. Rhymes

  2. Visualizations

  3. Acronyms

  4. Associations

  5. Short stories

If you love new mnemonic devices as much as I do as a way to help your students (or even yourself!) remember certain literacy-related content, hop on over to my Instagram page where I will be periodically sharing ideas in my stories.

What are some of your best mnemonic devices?

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?

STAY CONNECTED

Making Sense of the Silent Final E

The silent final E may sometimes cause quite the conundrum. WHY is that E there? English makes no sense! Right? Well, that final silent E wears quite a few hats, and I’m going to use this post to explain those hats in a way that makes sense. 

  1.  It makes the vowel say its name.

    This is the most commonly known reason as to why the silent final E exists. It makes the vowel immediately preceding the consonant(s) before the E say its long vowel sound. When you add an E to the end of the word tap, you get tape.

    More examples: cap + E = cape; kit + E + kite; & past + E + paste

  2. Every syllable must have a written vowel — even if it cannot be heard.

    Would you write the word puzzl ? No way! It would be puzzle, with a silent final E. That’s because the word puzzle is two syllables: puz-zle, and if that silent final E were missing, there would be no written vowel in the second syllable.

    More examples: little (lit-tle); pickle (pick-le); & giggle (gig-gle)

  3. C and G can soften to /s/ and /j/ when followed by an E (I or Y, too).

    Have you ever noticed that when you add a silent final E to the word hug to make huge, the short U transforms to a long U, but the sound of the G changes from a /g/ to a /j/? This is because when a G (or C) comes before an E, I, or Y, the sound can soften.

    More examples: practice & garage

    (In these examples, see how the same letter can appear twice in the same word, but because of the silent final E, the second time the same letter appears, it is pronounced differently.)

  4. English language words do not end in I, J, U, or V.

    If you’re like me, you are trying very hard right about now to think of any and all exceptions that you can. “What about hi, flu, sushi, and ski ?” you may ask. Hi and flu are abbreviations for hello and influenza. Sushi is a Japanese word and ski is Norwegian. The true exceptions are the pronouns I and you.

More examples: olive, tie, & blue.

I hope that these examples of the many hats that silent final E wears make at least one part of the English language seem a bit less illogical. When these general rules of thumb are better understood, the English language will seem just a bit less confusing!

STAY CONNECTED