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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Supporting Upper Elementary Readers

I’ll never forget what a colleague of mine told me in my early days of teaching: “Once the kids get to third grade, there isn’t a way to help them figure out a word. You just have to tell them what it is, and then they’ll memorize it.” 🙄

I know, I know. 

This didn’t sit well with me, but I had no authority and little experience with this grade level at the time. What I did, however, was my own detective work to uncover the truth, and to help those students out.

You cannot tell me that once a child is in third grade reading instruction ends, and that there is no way to support these readers to read the longer, multisyllabic words in their chapter books and content texts across curricula.

So what did I do? I watched and listened. I observed the types of words that were stumping these readers. 

Here is what I discovered about most of them:

  • With some of the words, students could have used knowledge of advanced phoneme-grapheme relationships to blend and sound out words. They could have tried different sounds made by the same letter. For example, EA and CH each make three different and unique sounds. 

  •  If students had been provided explicit instruction on syllable types, they could have identified where the division occurs in each word and divide the word into manageable syllables. 

  • They could have isolated the root, base, and affixes, thereby also making the word more manageable to decode. 

10+ years later and I still cringe when I think about that comment, and at the thought of this idea (or rather, lie) being perpetuated — that reading instruction at the intermediate and upper elementary level comes to a halt because the words “can’t be sounded out” like readers are taught to do in K-2.

As students get older and have more advanced texts in their hands, we must move with them and guide them and give them more advanced strategies. It’s no coincidence that this is also the age when students, who once liked to read, avoid it. There is an absence of explicit strategies to support them. It’s now hard. It’s frustrating. It’s no longer enjoyable. 

Decoding text is just one component of the ability to be a proficient reader. We need comprehension as well. However, if students cannot master decoding fluently, they will not be able to work on comprehending efficiently. With explicit instruction in advanced phonemic and phonological awareness, syllable division, and morphology, we can help bridge that instructional gap and provide students with what they need to guide them towards becoming competent and confident readers who actually want to read once they cross the bridge from the lower elementary grades to the upper elementary grades. One best practice at a time, and we CAN appropriately support and motivate these transitional readers.

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.

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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?