Building Background Knowledge in Urban Schools

Comprehension has been an ongoing struggle in Urban Schools.  We already know that enhancing a student’s background knowledge is a strong indicator for earning potential so why don’t we spend more school time on making connections to academic content,pushing subjects across disciplines, and scaffolds to build background knowledge?  As a K-12 teacher, I had two types of students one with “street smarts” and one with “book smarts.”   I had brilliant students in second grade who could tell you the fastest way to get downtown (non-academic) and I had students that were able to see the relationships between school content and build connections (academic).  Some aspects of life are related to “street smarts” though it has been shown that a student’s earning potential in life is primarily focused on academic achievement. 

Building Background Knowledge in Students with Resources

There are two ways we acquire new information: One, we store,process it, and we file it away in our brain to retrieve it later.  Two, we consistently have academic experiences that help us make connections later.  In schools, we must extend the amount of time necessary for our students to acquire background knowledge, especially for the students that do not come from affluent backgrounds. We must provide enriching experiences (i.e. museums, art galleries, travel exchange programs, and experiential learning).  These are just a few ways to transform teaching and if your school cannot provide those experiences, think about mentoring.  It can be instrumental in the life of our students and these relationships go beyond the classroom that leave long term effects. 

Working with Content in the Classroom

Teachers must come to understand that learning will no longer be defined by a time and place, and we have to adapt towards the future of learning.  There are six major stages in building comprehension in the classroom. Here is the list:

1. Create excitement by building a dynamic activity to explore a topic, unit, or theme.

   1. Write down questions or statements students have about the topic, theme, or unit and address them when you are teaching

   2. Preview the stories, books, articles, current news while consistently asking, “How this applies to a bigger concept?”

      1. Picture walk and discuss while building Tier II vocabulary words and initiate student discussion on the topic or theme. Don’t forget you have story vocabulary and there is theme vocabulary!

      2. Read the text together and use strategies (i.e. making Inferences, asking questions, predicting, summarizing, visualizing etc.).

         1. Teachers must “Think Aloud” so students can hear how you think critically, and problem solve.

         2. Read the text again for fluency and now focus on a comprehension skill (i.e. main idea and details, author’s purpose, cause and effect, drawing conclusions, genre, describing plot etc.)

            1. Take one aspect of the story and extend it to a comprehension skill

            2. Discussion without the teacher

               1. The Teacher is the facilitator, but ideas have been recorded throughout the theme.

                  1. Don’t forget to mark new content and add to their existing body of knowledge.

                  2. Record new information to push thinking beyond the classroom (i.e. podcast, tweeting, posting, uploading, tagging).

                     1. There are so many ways student can display their knowledge.

                        1. Think digital and concrete add it to the bulletin board and blog about it.

Working with What We’ve Got

We are now tasked with the challenge of closing the gap, so it is important for us to find experiences that are no longer at our disposal.  With the dwindling of funding,many schools can no longer afford to go on field trips which requires educators to think outside the box (think re-enacting the Civil War).  I’ve brought in community members, visited local business on walking field trips with my students, invited a dance team to school, and had colleges help fund trips to the local campuses.  The possibilities are endless, you can do this!  All it takes is an idea and a friendly phone call.

Resources:

Marzano, Robert. Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement: Research on What Words in Schools