How important is accessing prior knowledge for students? How do you immerse students in background knowledge or text sets to facilitate activation?
Over the years while spending our traditional two Superintendent Days in September, going over past ELA tests, it dawned on me that a students prior knowledge about a story's topic may play a substantail role in the percentage of students answering questions correctly. The Baseball Study further supported this assumption. However, I was shocked at the final results of this study due to the fact that reading level seemed to be null and void when both levels of students had substanial knowledge about the topic they were reading about, in this case being baseball. "Students with high reading ability and high knowledge did not recall better or summarize more than did students with low reading ability and high knowledge." (p. 19) I thought that both the reading level and prior knowledge worked together! So this leads me to think about some things I could add to my classroom that could help students have some background knowledge to pull from when it comes time to talk about various different topics in US History. One of the biggest issues with US History is that it takes all over the United States, in parts that my students have never visited or have no ability to compare it to another place they have visited due, in large part, to the socioeconomic status of our community. I am playing around with the idea of having students make a travel book throughout the year filled with states that we virtually visit once a week. With 40 weeks of school, we should get through a good portion of the states. I will focus on states that play a large role in our curriculum such as the original 13 colonies and the states that played large roles in the Civil War. I would also want to take advantage of current events happening in the nation such as the tragic wild fires that have been burning in Hawaii. Doing this could at least give them some knowledge to pull from when it comes time to reading informative texts within my classroom as well as those given on NYS tests.
Some other strategies that Beers discussed that I would like to do in my classroom are the Word Splash, the Tea Party and Thematic Clusters. The Word Splash seems super simple and I like the graphics associated with this short activity. As for the Tea Party, it would be a great way to get students to talk to one another and get a sneak peak into what the article will be about. Lastly, one of my draws to Thematic Clusters was the brainstorming of words. Instantly I will be able to know what vocabulary students will or will not need. I also like the fact the example given on page 99 used colors, such a simple way to have information stand out.
What strategies stuck out to you in this chapter and what ones and how will you bring them into your instruction?
The strategy that stuck out to me the most in this chapter can be found under the heading of Genre Reformulation. I can't stop thinking about the ABC Books. From the example the author gave, students were able to expand their vocabulary by searching for words for each letter of the alphabet and then when a letter couldn't be found in the reading, they found a word that could work! Through this strategy students reread the text multiple times and need to support their choice with knowledge obtained from the text or connections they have made. I actually do a unit on European Exploration and I may very well use the exact same activity they do in this book! (p.143-144)
As for the second strategy that stood out to me was the Read, Rate, Reread. I personally do not like rereading whole novels because there are so many books out in the world I already won't be able to read them all! But when I am reading a book there are many times that I end up rereading a certain section or checking back in the book to fact check something that was stated. This is definitely an invisible skill that good readers use to better understand what they are reading and it is very effective. Therefore, if I can create this rereading skill into my lessons, I am hoping that it will become second nature for students to reread, the amount of information they can get if they do this will improve their comprehension. Overall, this section had many strategies that seems like they can easily be implemented within my classroom.