Activate Prior Knowledge 

Activating prior knowledge means both eliciting from students what they already know and building initial knowledge that they need in order to access upcoming content. 

Students’ comprehension of new information can be improved by activating their prior knowledge, a process that helps students make connections between new information and information they already know. Students who already know something about a topic—perhaps from prior experiences at home or at school—often find it easier to understand related material and to gain new information because they can anticipate what they will encounter in their reading and relate those new ideas to what they already know. Of course, students sometimes have difficulty activating their prior knowledge independently or else they do not have the requisite background knowledge at all. (https://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/sec-rdng/cresource/q3/p09/)