What is the importance of Activating Prior Knowledge (APK)? 

Begin by briefly discussing common misconceptions students may have about the topic of the day’s lesson, Chandler writes. For a lesson about oceans, for example, everyday misconceptions might include statements like “all oceans have the same salinity,” or “nothing lives in anoxic mud.” Have students take a quick true/false quiz focused on statements that “all seem plausible but are all false,” he suggests, before revealing to the class that all the quiz statements are in fact false—and that they’re about to learn why throughout the lesson.  

1. Break class into small groups. Each group discusses the topic or question on their own for a few minutes to generate arguments, answers, or ideas.

2. Once time is up, have each small group share one idea, answer, or argument with the class. Record ideas on the board.

Designed to get kids interested in the lesson ahead, informational hooks can be any type of short, targeted media: videos, clips from a podcast, news headlines, photos. Even a great anecdote might work. To vet relevant hooks, Chandler suggests considering the following questions:

• What concepts or skills will the hook highlight?

• What is “truly unique, novel, or useful” about the hook?

• Will the hook grab their attention—but not distract from the lesson?

Display the learning target for the day, prior to learning of course, and have students write possible question(s) for the day’s learning target. At the end for a closure, go through the questions as a class and see if there are any you can answer together, or, alternatively, vet through the questions and assign 1-3 as an exit ticket. This is based off of a technique called QFT (Question Formulation Technique). 

A collection of prompts to activate prior knowledge, inform instruction, that make student thinking and learning visible!!!  

1. Ask the entire group to line up along one wall of the class and then present an issue.

2. Tell the class that the right end of the line represents the position “yes, I agree completely” and the left end of the line represents the position “no, I completely disagree.” Students should mingle and discuss their opinion on the issue, eventually finding and taking their appropriate position within the continuum.

3. Once students are in place, take a few moments to discuss why they have chosen the position they have in the various locations in the line-up.

4. Repeat for a variety of questions.

5. For another version of this activity, tape a circle in the center of the room. Students who agree should stand close to the circle and those who disagree should stand further away. Ask students who are on the extremes (close or far away) and in the middle to explain why they chose that location.

This strategy provides students with different visual prompts to consider. Then, students can share what they notice about color, type of object, the organization of the objects, or other mathematical patterns/properties that exist.  Here is the NCTM Notice and Wonder page https://www.nctm.org/noticeandwonder/

Help students discover patterns and relationships and engage with the properties of operations by showing a problem, discussing the strategy, then leading students to use the modeled solution to solve a similar problem. Some strings are done as a number talk (mental math), and in others students are recording their own thinking. 

Inspired by the research of learning scientist Manu Kapur, consider occasionally designing a short problem-solving activity, perhaps focused on crucial target concepts, as a warm-up exercise before jumping into instruction.

The problem should be just beyond students’ reach and designed to activate prior knowledge, motivate them, and surface what they do and do not know. Explain to students that the exercise is designed to be confusing and frustrating and that struggling is normal—even expected. Though a regular productive failure exercise might take 30-40 minutes, a warm-up is clearly much shorter. Allow students to wrestle with a problem for a few minutes, and then step in and build off their ideas and solutions, comparing and contrasting, and then teaching how to correctly solve the problem. 

Have students partner with a classmate, discuss what they learned during the previous class, and then present to the group. It’s a quick, effective way to “get students active, and helps the teacher know what actually ‘stuck’ from the previous day’s lesson,” Chandler writes. 

Present key vocabulary terms and concepts, along with brief definitions, and ask students to sort the words in ways that make sense to them. With a partner, or in small groups, have them discuss their sorting rationales. “The teacher then leads a discussion of how the terms and concepts are related to each other,” Chandler writes, and connects them, if possible, to students’ “interests and prior knowledge.” Consider closing out the lesson by having students sort and explain the words once more.  

Display four images and ask students which one doesn’t belong. However, there isn’t a single answer: There can be justifications for all of the items or images. check out https://wodb.ca/ to see some ideas!

Ask students to engage in co nversation and justify their thinking, such as "would you rather have a rectangular or circular pizza?" The focus is on the justification and relating the justification to mathematical concepts like area. Here are some real-life choices for studetns to make and then justify with mathematics! https://www.wouldyourathermath.com