According to Keppler (2016), in order to help students maximize the content, skills, and language of a lesson, teachers must help their students draw on prior knowledge and providing students sufficient front-end experience with a foundational concept from which to build further knowledge and skills. Learning is then improved when students make connections between what they are learning and the things they already know and experience. Below are some strategies for teachers of Multilingual Learners to work to activate students’ prior knowledge and schema.
Pre-teaching vocabulary (Click here to see a sample lesson)
Introducing/representing concepts verbally and visually (See this period table as an example; also, check out The Noun Project as a fantastic, free resource for finding icons & images to represent an infinite number of terms)
Realia (real, tangible items), photos, and illustrations (for 3D representations of objects, consider a free, online tool like P3D.in for viewing a variety of objects in a 3D space from the public gallery)
Preparatory and/or simplified texts designed to build background knowledge on a topic/concept
KWL chart (check out this KWL chart creator from Read, Write, Think)
Pretesting with a partner- partner gives MLL students an opportunity to preview the upcoming material for a unit or subject area. The pre-assessment will also give the ESL or G.E. teacher an idea of the students’ prior knowledge, which will help to direct instruction. It also gives the teacher info on any misconceptions students may have or differences in a cultural definition, depending on the subject matter of the pre-test.
Backwards Book Walk - This activity is designed to help students understand the overall meaning of a text (or book chapter) before looking at the bits and pieces. Students move in a backwards manner, reading headings, captions, and keywords. Ask students to guess the title of the text, and then share their guess with a partner.
Go to Your Corner-Choose a topic with four dimensions/element and post a picture/label in each corner representing each dimension/element. Students move to the corner they are most interested in and visit with a partner to explain why they chose the corner they did.
The Insert Method-In partners, students read a nonfiction article using a coding system of check marks (V) for concepts already familiar to them; question marks (?) for something they find confusing or not understood; exclamation marks (!) for something new, unusual or surprising; and plus signs (+) for something new to the reader. As students gain new knowledge and understanding, question marks (?) are replaced with an asterisk (*)
Student journals that allow leaners to reflect back on previous learning and build on the knowledge while reading/writing about a topic.
Field trips (real or virtual) to provide academically enriching experiences with tools like Google Earth AR/VR
Adaption of content to all levels of student proficiency
Personal dictionaries that students create as a spelling and vocabulary resource. Words can be categorized alphabetically, by subject, morphological structure, sound, content or topic
Signal words, or posters that display lists of words and phrases that signal different types of text structures
4 Corners Vocabulary-student created charts with an illustration (representing the word), a sentence including the word, a definition, and the actual word
Identifying and using cognates to teach English
Previewing and pre-reading materials
Anticipation Guides- In an effort to stimulate students' interest in a topic and set a purpose for reading, before reading, students listen to or read several statements about key concepts presented in the text; they're often structured as a series of statements with which the students can choose to agree or disagree
Multimedia used as overview of--or introduction to--a topic