Building Background Knowledge

A person's background knowledge, or prior knowledge, is a collection of "abstracted residue" (Schallert, 2002, p. 557) that has been formed from all of life's experiences. We all bring diverse bits of background knowledge to every experience, and we use them to connect or glue new information to old. Background knowledge is an essential component in learning because it helps us make sense of new ideas and experiences. To assist students in engaging, processing, and applying academic content from every subject area, teachers need to build students' background knowledge before teaching content by linking concepts to students' personal, cultural, or academic experience. They can ask “What do my ELL students need to access the content that my native speakers may not need?” We should not assume that even though a student speaks English, he/she already has the necessary background knowledge to understand and connect to new concepts.

Five (5) PDUs or EOU credit Possible:

Objective(s):

• Participants will discuss the importance of tapping into their students' background or prior knowledge and linking it to new content
• Participants will select and implement research supported strategies designed to build their students' background knowledge

Explore:

• Read:
  • Building Background Knowledge in the Academic Language in Content Classes LiveBinder (and any sub tabs)
  • Beginning With What Students Know by Linda Campbell and Bruce Campbell
  • The Additional Activities and More Resources at the bottom of the web page
• View:
  • All three videos on the left below
  • At least one of the videos on the right below (these show examples from each grade band - elementary, middle, and high)
• Apply:
  • Implement one of the strategies/activities described from the Read and/or View sections in your classroom
• Reflect:
  • Read Why Reflect? and Posting a Reflection
  • Tell which strategy/activity you chose to try out in your classroom and describe the resulting impact on instruction and learning. Share any challenges with implementation of this strategy/activity. What will your next steps be?
  • Summarize what you learned about building background knowledge and the implications for your students, especially the English language learners, in relation to comprehending the language and content of your subject area.
  • Post your reflection to the Discussion Group
• Rate:
  • Refer to the details and link you received upon registration

Activities for Building Background Knowledge:

More Resources for Building Background:

• Real objects, photos, and/or illustrations
• Videos to bring a subject to life
• Field trips - actual or virtual
• KWL Chart (see resources below) - the purpose of this chart is to assess students' knowledge about a topic, uncover any misconceptions, and allow students input about what they would like to learn about the topic
• Activating Strategies (see below)
• Student journals - journals allow students to reflect back on previous learning and build on that knowledge while reading and writing about a topic
• Signal Words (see below) - implicitly teach students words and phrases that "signal" different types of text structures