-How important is accessing prior knowledge for students? (Baseball study) How do you immerse students in background knowledge or text sets to facilitate activation?
I’ve always known that accessing prior knowledge is essential for reading, though early in my career I used background knowledge as part of the buy-in to get students interested in the text and less as an explicit reading strategy. It makes sense though, kids work harder for things they are interested in rather than random passages about sea slugs that are connected to nothing. I also love how the magic of background knowledge can make kids that fly under the radar all of a sudden the expert in the room.
-Multiple exposures are important for retention and independence. How will you offer these opportunities?
I always stress the importance of going back into the reading as many times as are necessary by explaining my own process when viewing films. The first go-round is for mood and plot, second viewing for dialogue, third for tiny details (like symbols, foreshadowing, and other easter eggs) and I find that my enjoyment of a film usually increases with each viewing.
-What strategies stuck out to you in this chapter and what ones and how will you bring them into your instruction?
I am very familiar with most of the strategies in these chapters (though not always by the same terminology…that’s education, always reinventing the wheel) and am super excited to see how excited so many people are to use sketch to stretch as it really is awesome. I was really struck by it says, I say, and so and how simple it makes the complex process of making inferences.