Background Knowledge

BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE

Our understanding of vocabulary is intimately linked to our knowledge of the world; it is impossible to know exactly where our grasp of a word's meaning ends and our background knowledge begins.

There is strong evidence to suggest that a reader's background knowledge supports their ability to extract information from a text, to make necessary inferences, and consequently to construct and update a situation model. As a result, too little knowledge of the subject to which a text relates can become a barrier to comprehension. This is all very obvious, but it is still worth discussing as recognition of the importance of background knowledge isn't reflected in the reading curriculum that children receive in many schools.

First, the learning that children undertake beyond discrete reading sessions is still part of their reading curriculum. When a child learns about deforestation in geography or electrical circuits in science, they are de facto improving their ability to read. More dots have been added to their pointillist canvas. This is just another reason why children deserve to learn a carefully sequenced curriculum full of knowledge that has been purposefully chosen, with worthwhile links within subjects and between them.

Second, all of the books and texts that are chosen for children to read should focus on worthwhile content, be they rich, captivating stories or non-fiction texts that help children discover something important about their world...

In summary, we must take every opportunity to develop our student's understanding of the world in which they live. Learning about our world and its culture is learning to read.

(The Art & Science of Teaching Primary Reading, Christopher Such)

Reading Rockets -

Building Background Knowledge

BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE

To comprehend a story or text, young readers need a threshold of knowledge about the topic, and new, tougher state standards place increasing demands on children's prior knowledge. This article offers practical classroom strategies to build background knowledge such as using contrasts and comparisons and encouraging topic-focused wide reading.

sCARBOROUGH'S READING ROPE

Background knowledge refers to all the knowledge, facts, concepts and beliefs you bring with you when comprehending or learning from a situation or text. In relation to reading, we rely on background knowledge to attend to and make sense of what we are reading. The more familiar a reader is with the content of a text, the more easily they will process, chunk, understand and remember the information.

Imagine you were asked to read a text about a topic you have very little knowledge about-perhaps theoretical quantum physics. The reading task would likely feel very demanding. Now consider reading a text about a topic you know a lot about- this reading task would likely feel much easier and less cognitively taxing.

Teachers can support students to build background knowledge by providing exposure to rich and deep content that can be drawn upon and applied as background knowledge to problem solve and create meaning from texts.

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