What is it? How does it work?
Background:
Strategies to help students activate what they know in order to connect it with the content of a comprehension task.
Overview:
Activating and building background knowledge is a strategic process incorporated into effective prereading. Several teacher strategies for guiding students to activate their knowledge include PReP (PReP Reading Plan; Langer, 1981), Advanced Organizers (Ausubel, 1968), Anticipation Guides (Readence, Bean, & Baldwin, 1998), Text Previews (Graves, Cook, & LaBerge, 1983).
PReP is a teaching strategy for activating students' knowledge before a reading task. The teacher guides the class in a discussion that begins with students making word associations to key concepts the teacher has identified. Students then reflect on these concepts, reformulating what they brainstormed. The process continues as students compare their knowledge to that of other students, self-assess their level of their prior knowledge, and predict areas of new information. From student responses, the teacher can assess the level of well-formed, partially-formed, or ill-formed knowledge structures of the students.
Advanced Organizers and Text Previews are paragraphs written by the teacher with a formal structure that engage the students' background knowledge and foster interest. A first section of these previews builds interest and makes connections to familiar topics. The next section previews/summarizes the text to-be-read in a short synopsis. A final section provides guiding questions focusing the students' reading. The teacher creates the preview, discusses how the preview relates to students prior knowledge in a large group, and then directs students to read the text.
Anticipation Guides also follow a prescribed format. After identifying the major concepts in a text, the teacher creates a limited number (usually 3-5 ) of debatable, experienced-based statements that express these concepts. Before reading, students read the statements and check off those with which they agree. Next, students discuss each statement and debate their opinions. Students then read the passage and end with a follow-up discussion of the statements based upon their reading.
Effectiveness: |
Established
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Primary Outcomes: |
- background knowledge
- making inferences
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Students: |
All secondary readers
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Setting: |
- general education class
- reading class
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Support for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Readers: |
Students can be led to contribute their experiences and understandings from outside the classroom to the academic reading task. It is an opportunity for the teacher to acknowledge and honor what students know.
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Approach: |
- diagnostic instruction
- cooperative learning
- culturally responsive teaching
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Cost category:
(Note: The cost category was last updated in 2000, at the time of publication. Contact the publisher for specific current costs associated with using this item.)
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none
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Developers: |
Various researchers have developed and reported these strategies.
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What Does It Mean to Teach Reading Explicitly?
Comprehend Text