Activating Background Knowledge

Activating background knowledge was always something that I spent a lot of time and energy on. For the past 3 years I taught at a title 1 school where students came to school with little to no background knowledge at all. To aid in comprehension, I always spent time talking with them, showing videos and pictures, acting things out, and basically doing anything I can to "create" these experiences that were non-existent. This year? Wow! I am shocked. Being that I am not at a title 1 school anymore, my students come in with a wealth of background knowledge. I am finding it much easier for my students to relate to the books we are reading.
Each week we focus on one comprehension strategy during our shared reading. This week we focused on predicting and connecting the text to what we know. We spent time discussing what we know, thus activating background knowledge. It was so different and "eye-opening" for me. Our first story this week was titled "Pizza at Sallys."  In this story, very simple things happened. Sally had a pizza shop, she used different ingredients to make her pizza recipe, she then sold her pizza to hungry customers. When we started to discuss the pictures my students were wiggling all over with their hands high in the air. They were so excited to share the things they cook with their parents, different recipes they like to make, their favorite restaurants, and what they know about people who worked in restaurants. This was very different for me than a room full of students who didnt speak much English and were reluctant to raise their hands.
Being that I know how important it is for students to share their experiences and connect with the text, I decided to try something different. In order for everyone to get to share I tried doing a mix, pair, share with them. The students had to mix up in the room, pair up with a partner, and share what they knew. We did this kagan strategy over and over allowing students to focus on different questions. They shared about their favorite restaurants and what they serve, our favorite pizza toppings, our least favorite toppings, and things we cook at home with our families. It was a great success! The kids were so excited to read the story to see how it compared to what they knew. When we finished we had a conversation about how the story was similar to our own experiences.
I found that when I spend a little extra time activating their background knowledge and allow them all to share what they know, they were more engaged in the story. My students remembered our experience and our story. In fact, all week they have been asking me to talk about what we know by doing a mix, pair, share! This was a great way to allow all my students to get talking about what they know in a meaningful way. We have been doing this all week. Next week, I am thinking of having them write down their experiences to share with a friend. I can't wait!

Choosing Books Makes a Difference

My entire childhood I did not enjoy reading. I didn’t like to read anything! It wasn’t until I was about 18 that I picked up a book and just fell in love with it. It sounds silly, but this book was “Bergdorf Blondes.” It was something that I could relate to and that was the winning ticket! Choosing a book is so important. Most of the time students are given a text book to read and are required to read what their teacher assigns. This model of teaching is flawed. Students should be exposed to a variety of different texts and different genres. We want our students to grow up with a love for reading that will carry over into their adult life. In chapter 5 in “Strategies That Work” the author confirms by viewpoint and explains that any strategy can be taught with any book.  In my classroom, I keep a wide variety of books in my classroom library. However, many books are chosen for us. I strive to make sure that my students enjoy reading and know that it is not just a chore. We pick out books at the media center and I model my love for reading. This year I have started keeping some of my favorite books on my desk to read, and also keeping track of my favorite books with a reading log. I have seen the effect this has on my students. They are loving it! Every day they come in and want to share with me what books they read at home. I love that they get more choices.

According to Harvey (2007), “We often ask teachers to write down the different types of reading they’ve done over the past few weeks. Usually, they mention newspapers, magazines, letters, manuals, cookbooks, brochures, reports, letters, and so on. Many also have a novel or a long non-fiction trade book going, but 80 percent of the reading they report is of the short-text variety.” However, she also stated that in schools students mostly read 80 percent of long-text variety. I love the idea of exposing students to more short-texts. When choosing a short-text, we need to consider the purpose, genre, audience, topic, quality, and text structure.  We also live in a technological age where students are able to access and find many short texts. At the intermediate or high school level, students can definitely find magazine articles online, newspaper articles, magazine clippings, or other short texts for their own reading pleasure. Giving students a topic and allowing them to expand of that and choose their own reading selections will motivate them, while also increasing their comprehension. I can imagine something like this could be done along with a required reading. Students can choose shorter texts that correlate with an assigned topic. I believe giving students guidelines, without setting limits, could make assignments take off! They sky could be the limit!

While I find myself often trying to relate to older students, I love kindergarten! So I wonder how this would look in kindergarten, as mostly everything we read is pretty short. However, I currently implement many different genres of texts. This week, we have been reading collections of poetry and discussing what makes a poem different from a story. My students are already starting to understand that some texts are shorter than others. We also just got in some National Geographic magazines that I plan on introducing to my students.

But Where Does Comprehension Fit in?

I often find myself struggling teaching comprehension with my guided reading books, mainly because my books are so simple and repetitive. Kindergarten books are generally focused on the decoding aspect of reading rather than higher thought. So how do we get all these awesome comprehension strategies in? We model them. When we read aloud with our students we can model all of the great strategies we learn. I can think aloud about what I am thinking or feeling as I am reading, while also asking probing questions to prompt my students thinking. Even if my students are not answering the questions I am asking, they are listening to them and thinking about it. Modeling comprehension strategies are a key when reading with emergent readers. This week in my classroom I intend to model that thinking not only during my shared reading, but in my guided reading groups as my kids work on a decoding skill.