Background Knowledge: the Key to Amplifying Reading Comprehension

You’ve spent the entire morning teaching inferencing skills, and you’ve just read a story about the amazing sites seen by Flick, a beautiful animal that has finally taken flight after metamorphosis. You ask a student who is very engaged with the story to make an inference by sharing two things that might have taken place right before the animal took flight. Your student says the animal probably made a nest and ate a worm. It’s not that your student doesn’t comprehend what the story is saying; they just don’t have the background knowledge needed to make a logical inference! 

You can teach inferences all day long, but if your students don’t possess relevant knowledge related to what you are talking or reading about, it quickly becomes a tough uphill climb. We’re talking about background knowledge - the information someone already has about a topic. Background knowledge is gathered and stored in our long-term memory through real-life experiences, reading, watching, and listening. We bring our own personal bundles of background knowledge to every situation we encounter, including reading.

Here’s what we know - reading comprehension is an outcome, and it’s the overall goal: it’s a result of a combination of skills that weave together somewhat behind the scenes to help us understand what we read. Scarborough’s famous Reading Rope identifies background knowledge as a vital part of the language comprehension strand of reading comprehension. In Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement, Robert J. Marzano explains how crucial it is to overcome a lack of background knowledge that impedes the achievement of many students. 

As teachers, we’ve heard about the importance of background knowledge for decades. But in our quest to build stronger reading comprehension skills as measured by student scores on standardized tests, we often skip or skim over it as we try to help students focus on isolated state standards like finding the main idea, predicting, and making inferences. Building background knowledge, and using that knowledge to link new vocabulary and envision a relevant schema, is HUGE! It’s the firm foundation on which we build and practice the more readily measured comprehension skills. For example, when you make an inference, you use two things: information from the text AND your prior knowledge. Background knowledge actually helps minimize the impact of weaknesses in other reading skills. It’s also a foundation for building essential life skills. Students who have background knowledge and can infer will be able to pick up implied information in everyday conversations. The benefits of investing time in building background knowledge are significant and long-lasting!

One challenge with today’s culture and technology is that it’s easy for students to collect fragments of knowledge that are loosely or not connected, partial in meaning, or shallow; students often do not slow down to think about information long enough and deeply enough to let it become a meaningful part of their fund of knowledge or their schema. Consequently, they don’t develop the “hooks” where they can firmly attach relevant information, grow neural networks, and think critically in order to predict, infer, and understand. Our students on the spectrum are often disadvantaged because they may be very good at focusing on details yet struggle to create mental images from words, categorize, generalize, or see the big picture. This makes it especially hard for them to identify relevant prior knowledge, relate new information to that knowledge, link details together, classify, infer, and draw conclusions. 

It’s our job to help students build context and background knowledge so that they can more fully engage with what they hear and read. We have to think, plan, and teach strategically because there are always some pieces of prior knowledge on which to build, even if those pieces are very basic. Finding creative ways to promote curiosity and help our students connect with new knowledge is fun.

As a teacher and a parent, I constantly look for ways to build background knowledge and link new knowledge. Field trips and virtual field trips are concrete places to start. Many online videos are readily available, and the visuals and action are great for establishing and maintaining engagement. It’s helpful to frontload video clips by posing a question or suggesting what students can look for as they watch. Think-Pair-Share is an active learning strategy that can be followed by the teacher asking a question, giving students time to think about it, visiting with a person next to them, and finally sharing with the class. Think-Pair-Share is a positive way to help timid or resistant students begin to communicate with one other person and eventually grow into being able to share with the class.

Another powerful, evidence-based activity that engages students with prior knowledge is to use K-W-L charts (Donna Ogle, 1986). K-W-L has been around for decades and is still an effective tool for all ages. When teachers use the K-W-L graphic organizer, they coach students to activate prior knowledge (K: What I Know), identify their purpose for reading (W: What I Want to Know), and sum up what they’ve read (L: What I’ve Learned). This strategy is valuable because it can be used in many different academic settings, and it provides a concrete structure for students to organize information before, during, and after reading or listening. K-W-L is also powerful because it encourages growth in social communication skills as students brainstorm together, share their own experiences, and take time to reflect. 

While we always want to encourage sustained reading, many struggling readers need short, informative reading passages to build background knowledge, provide reading practice, and develop targeted reading comprehension strategies simultaneously. We want the biggest bang for our buck. Rather than rushing from one skill standard to another, we need to be willing to sit patiently with our students, model curiosity, and think deeply about what we are reading and exploring. When we frontload passages meaningfully, we clarify the purpose of reading and link new reading to prior knowledge. Using multiple modalities, we help build layers of background knowledge that form strong networks in long-term memory.  One of my students’ favorite reading activities a couple of years ago was when we studied the history and current interest in yo-yos using historical records, engaging videos, and several high-interest texts. The kids loved experimenting with different types of yo-yos, learning yo-yo tricks, and watching related videos. They read how and when yo-yos became popular, as well as about potential and kinetic energy, gravitational pull, and momentum. They discovered the differences that make some yo-yos great and some yo-yos duds. Several students tracked me down the following year to show me a new yo-yo trick they had learned over the summer. They told me they had investigated to find the best quality yo-yo, why people liked it, where it could be purchased, the price, and who won with it in national competitions. These kids were independently continuing to build background knowledge and life skills beyond the confines of a worksheet or a classroom. It is time well spent when we use our students’ interests to boost their motivation to read, build their fund of knowledge, and strengthen life skills. 

When we harness the power of interesting nonfiction passages, we can promote a culture of knowledge-building while increasing our students’ internal motivation to read and strengthening specific reading strategies. Some of my favorites include the following series, which can be used in various settings. 

• Hi/Lo Reading stories are very basic, yet they can provide a simple, motivating springboard for knowledge building that utilizes high-interest reading passages with a low reading level. 

• High-interest nonfiction Comprehension Quickies is another user-friendly resource that is great for students with short attention spans and reluctant readers of all ages. Because the passages are brief, they can easily be used as bell ringers or exit tickets. Although the passages are interesting for all ages through high school, they are written on 1st through 5th-grade reading levels. The reading levels are discretely identified with symbols on each passage, and the passages are arranged in the binder according to difficulty. 

• The Daily Comprehension Series provides a high-interest nonfiction story every day, chosen for its significance on that particular date. Students look forward to finding out something interesting related to each day. The research has already been done, so passages are ready to use without extra prep time. It’s like providing students a daily “fund of knowledge” vitamin! 

• The captivating real-world science and history short stories in the High-Interest Nonfiction binder are fascinating and content-rich; they build students’ fund of knowledge, develop vocabulary, and pose comprehension questions that require students to implement reading strategy skills. They also prompt further research to build even more knowledge. The stories are ideal for pairing with science and history units throughout the year.  

• I love mysteries, so one of my favorite collections is our High-Interest Mini Mysteries Binder, which pairs nonfiction and informational text about real locations with fun mini-mysteries. Virtual field trips can help introduce locations and engage students in learning. Students participate in “before you read" activities that provide background information, map skills, new vocabulary, and discussion of what they already know and predictions. Students then read a nonfiction passage and answer related comprehension questions. The following passage is the fictional mini-mystery that takes place in the location just studied. As students think about clues, they are motivated to think deeply. Finally, students practice reading strategies as they complete comprehension questions that promote critical thinking. They answer questions about the main idea, drawing conclusions, analogy, inference, cause and effect, vocabulary, fact/opinion, and prediction.

Pair some of these great nonfiction resources with creativity and evidence-based methods to invest in your student’s fund of knowledge! When you create a culture of providing more and more background information for your students, even in bite-size pieces, you will see growth in their critical thinking skills. Best of all, your student’s curiosity and internal motivation for reading, listening, and learning grow - and that’s a lifetime win!

References:

The Reading League. (2023). The reading rope: Key ideas behind the metaphor. Retrieved from https://www.thereadingleague.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/TRLC-Educators-and-Specialists-The-Reading-Rope-Key-Ideas-Behind-the-Metaphor.pdf

González, N., Moll, L. C., & Amanti, C. (Eds.). (2005). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Retrieved from https://fundsofknowledge.org/the-funds-of-knowledge-approach/

McGraw Hill Education. (n.d.). Knowledge building and the science of literacy. Retrieved from https://www.mheducation.com/prek-12/explore/science-of-literacy/knowledge-building.html#:~:text=Why%20is%20building%20knowledge%20important,the%20more%20you%20can%20learn.

Reading Resource. (n.d.). Teaching reading comprehension. Retrieved from https://www.readingresource.net/teachingreadingcomprehension.html#google_vignette

Smith, R., Snow, P., Serry, T., & Hammond, L. (2021). The Role of Background Knowledge in Reading Comprehension: A Critical Review. Reading Psychology, 42(3), 214–240. https://doi.org/10.1080/02702711.2021.1888348