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Background and Prior Knowledge - There's a Difference!
Students never arrive as blank slates. Every learner brings a rich mix of experiences, language, culture, and personal stories that shape how they make sense of new ideas. Effective teaching recognizes and uses this.
Building background knowledge happens when learners have little or no experience with a topic. Here, the teacher provides essential context, vocabulary, visuals, or demonstrations so students have something solid to build understanding on.
Activating prior knowledge is different. It assumes students already have some familiarity with the topic. The goal is to help them recall what they know, make connections, and link past experiences to new learning.
Both approaches support deeper meaning-making. By connecting content to students’ real lives, we promote clarity, strengthen retention, and validate the diverse experiences each learner brings to the classroom.
Activating Prior Knowledge
Building Background Knowledge
This presentation offers some key strategies to link concepts to students' backgrounds and to link between past learning and new learning. Be sure to click on the hyperlinks embedded in the presentation.
Developing Key Vocabulary is also an essential part of building background knowledge. Vocabulary strategies can be found on the Vocabulary page.
Building Background Knowledge - Made with Clipchamp_1690409157182.mp4This is an excerpt from the What's SIOP? series.
The recording for the Vocabulary portion of this presentation can be found on the Vocabulary page.
Background Knowledge and ELLs: What Teachers Need to Know
Background Knowledge and ELLs: What Teachers Need to Know
(Lydia Breiseth 2021)
Identify key background knowledge needed for the lesson.
Identify students' existing background knowledge.
Build background knowledge students need.
Target background knowledge needed to understand texts.
Avoid assumptions.
"Background knowledge is two-pronged: It's a cognitive task, as it is for all students, but it's also a cultural task. Cognitively, we know that new language is organized and retained when it is linked to prior schema. Culturally, ELLs are affected because they may not have the necessary cultural background knowledge to understand an English text." - (Dr. Joyce Purdy, 2017)
Learning Guide 3 - Why is building background knowledge important for ELLs.pdfReport abuse