Front-loading (Anticipatory Set)

Used to Increase Critical Thinking and Focus

Effective teachers organize their lessons into a pre-during-post format. The reason for this organizational pattern being that each portion of the lesson is designed to teach a specific skill set, require a certain set of strategies in each phase.

Front-loading is in the "pre" phase of the lesson. Front-loading a lesson is perhaps on of the most effective ways to improve student comprehension; this portion of the lesson develops specific skills which allow for greater critical thinking and focus throughout the lesson.

Front-loading involves the students accessing prior knowledge about the new content, learning essential vocabulary that will be used throughout the lesson and students using their prior knowledge and new vocabulary to develop predictions.

"Front-loading is the most important thing you can do to insure student success. Research suggests that well over half of student comprehension problems can be eliminated if teachers activate background knowledge students already possess prior to reading" - Jeff Wilhelm

Front-loading is what you do before the reading and learning activities to: create interest, foreground purpose, activate background knowledge the students already possess, build background that they do not possess but will need in order to be successful with the current task, and to provide some kind of response template to assist in constructing and place holding emergent understandings over the course of the unit.

Teachers need to think about these 3 things when designing Front-loading activities:

1) How does the activity activate and build the students' prior knowledge or background information regarding your unit inquiry?

2) How does the activity work to motivate students for reading and inquiry regarding the theme?

3) How will the frontloading activity work to organize inquiry, set purposes, and consolidate learning about the theme throughout the unit. For example, how will it help students set purposes for their reading, focus their learning, clarify what they are coming to know, and help them to monitor their learning progress?

(Taken from the 10 Most Remarkable Writers)