Chapter 4
Activating What
Students Know:
Teaching That
Unearths and
Upends Students’
Understanding
Fisher, D. & Frey, N. (2009). Background
Knowledge: The Missing Piece of the
Comprehension Puzzle. Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann.
Today’s Purposes
• Learn about the role of establishing
purpose in learning
• Examine instructional methods for
activating background knowledge in
your classroom
• Develop questions you can use in
your instruction to activate
background knowledge.
Table Talk
What are some of the purposes you have
for reading? How does it influence the
material you choose?
Reading For Purpose
• The purpose a person chooses when
reading influences meaning and
understanding.
• When purpose is unclear, or is different
from what the author has in mind,
meaning can be lost.
The House
(Pickert & Anderson, 1977)
The two boys ran until they came to the driveway. "See, I
told you today was good for skipping school," said Mark. "Mom
is never home on Thursday," he added. Tall hedges hid the house
from the road so the pair strolled across the finely landscaped
yard. "I never knew your place was so big," said Pete. "Yeah,
but it's nicer now than it used to be since Dad had the new stone
siding put on and added the fireplace."
There were front and back doors and a side door which led
to the garage, which was empty except for three parked 10speed bikes. They went in the side door, Mark explaining that it
was always open in case his younger sisters got home earlier
than their mother.
Pete wanted to see the house so Mark started
with the living room. It, like the rest of the
downstairs, was newly painted. Mark turned on the
stereo, the noise of which worried Pete. "Don't worry,
the nearest house is a quarter of a mile away," Mark
shouted. Pete felt more comfortable observing that no
houses could be seen in any direction beyond the
huge yard.
The dining room, with all the china, silver, and
cut glass, was no place to play, so the boys moved
into the kitchen where they made sandwiches. Mark
said they wouldn't go to the basement because it had
been damp and musty ever since the new plumbing
had been installed.
"This is where my Dad keeps his famous
paintings and his coin collection," Mark said as they
peered into the den. Mark bragged that he could get
spending money whenever he needed it since he'd
discovered that his Dad kept a lot in the desk drawer.
There were three upstairs bedrooms. Mark
showed Pete his mother's closet, which was filled
with furs and the locked box, which held her jewels.
His sisters' room was uninteresting except for the
color TV, which Mark carried to his room. Mark
bragged that the bathroom in the hall was his since
one had been added to his sisters' room for their use.
The big highlight in his room, though, was a leak in
the ceiling where the old roof had finally rotted.
The Role of Establishing
Purpose
• Establishing purpose is key to activating
background knowledge
• Include:
– Content: “We’ll be learning about how fear
outweighed justice when JapaneseAmericans were sent to internment camps in
World War II.”
– Language: “What words would be seen and
heard that would make people more
fearful?”
– Social: “You’ll be working in small groups to
analyze newspaper headlines from the
weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor.”
Variations of K-W-L (Ogle, 1986)
• KWLH: How can I learn more?
• KWL+: Adds mapping to the process
• KWLHLS: How will I learn it? How will I
share it?
• KWLS: What do I still need to learn?
• KWHHL: What are the head words?
What are the heart words?
Text Impressions
• Make a list of key words from a passage
students will be reading
• Ask them to write their own passage
using the terms in order
• Great way to assess background
knowledge, and it activates theirs
Quickwrites
• Brief written response to a question
• Should be a thought-provoking question
• Gives students a psychologically safe
environment to speculate
• Avoid questions that are too simplistic
• Extend these quickwrite questions by
inviting students to engage in structured
partner discussions
Type of
Knowledge
What It Is
Example
Declarative
Facts, labels,
names
You might have heard the
saying that “we only use 10%
of our brains.” Summarize
the evidence either for or
against the claim.
Procedural
Application of
information
The human cerebrum is
disproportionately large
compared to other mammals.
What advantage does this
give to humans?
Conditional
Knowing when
and why to apply
information
Hypothesize why it takes
more energy for a nerve
impulse to travel through an
axon that lacks myelin as
opposed to an axon that has
myelin.
Table Talk
Consider a unit you will be teaching in your
course, and develop three quickwrite
questions that tap into declarative,
procedural, and conditional knowledge. Share
your quickwrite questions with your table.
Checklists
• Offer students a map for completing a
task or solving a problem
• Strengthens background knowledge by
encouraging procedural knowledge
• Gives teachers a means for assessing
when thinking goes astray
Ask yourself …
Checklist for
Writers
[ ] P urpose: Have you define
d t he purpose of your writ ing? Are you trying to ent ertain?
Explain? Describe? Analyze? Define? P ersuade?
Somet hingelse? Are t he cont ent and
t one of yo
ur piece appropriat e for your purpose?
[ ] Audience: Have you identified yo
ur int ended reader(s)? Have you t hough about t he
cont ent of yo
ur piece (examples, det ails, quoted mat erials) in t erms of how t he reader
is likely t orespond?
[ ] Cont ent : Have you reread eacharagraph
p
carefully, asking yourself, “ W hatelse does
my reader needt o know here?” and “ Do I need to gat her more informat ion t o fill in
cont ent gaps?”
[ ] Organizat ion: Is t heorganizat ionof your piece as effect iveas possible? Do your
examples build t o t he st
rongest at t he end? W ould it be more effect iveto begin your
piece wit h your conclusionfollowed by support ? Orwould it be more effect ivet o
lead your readers hrough
t
t he st ory of your t hinking so t hey will reach t he conclusion
t he same way you did?
[ ] Int roduct ion:Is your int roduct ion engaging? Should you begin wit h a quotat ion?A
descript ion? An anecdot e? A shocking det ail?met
So hingelse?
[ ] Conclusion: Does your conclusion do mor
e t han simply repeat or summarizewhat
you have already said? Does
it leave t he reader with a fresh underst andingand/or
somet hing moreot t hinkabout ?
Rowlands, K. D. (2007). Check it out! Using checklists to support student learning.
English Journal, 96, 61–66.
Checklist in Math (Fay, 1965)
S - Survey: Skim to get the main idea of the problem.
Q - Question: Find the question that is asked in the
problem.
R - Reread: Read the problem and identify the
information and details provided.
Q - Question: Ask what operation needs to be
performed (if necessary, see signal-word
checklist for operations).
C - Compute: Solve the problem mathematically.
Q - Question: Ask yourself, “Does the answer make
sense?”
Sentence Frames
Feature academic
language in a cloze
format to promote
background
knowledge
•Cause/effect:
–Because _____ occurred, the results
– included _____.
•Compare/contrast:
–_____ and _____ share several
characteristics
–including ______.
Paragraph Frames
There is a lot of discussion about whether
______. The people who agree with this
idea, such as _____, claim that ____.
They also argue that _____. A further
point they make is _____. However, there
are also strong arguments against this
point. _____ believes that _____. Another
counterargument is _____. Furthermore,
_____. After looking at the different points
of view and the evidence for them, I think
____ because _____.
David Wray, University of Warwick
Assessing Your Practice
Use the rubric to determine your goals for building
Background knowledge in your classroom.
How do teachers foster background knowledge across the school day?
5
Activating
Background
Knowledge
Both unit and lesson
purposes are established
at the onset of ev ery
lesson. Varied oral and
written language tools are
used throughout the lesson
to cause activ ation
4
Unit and lesson purposes
are established during
most lessons. Varied oral
and written language tools
are used to activ ate BK,
but primarily at the start of
the lesson.
3
Unit and lesson purposes
are posted on the board
but are not discussed
within the lesson. Oral or
written language tools are
occasionally used in some
lessons.
2
Purpose of the lesson is
posted but is not linked to
larger unit purposes. Oral
or written langue tools are
used as icebreakers or
warm-ups.
1
Purposes are behav ioral in
nature and are not linked
to larger unit concepts.
Students have f ew
opportunities to ref lect on
what they know about a
topic or concept.
Building Your Own
Background Knowledge
• Watch Peter Elbow, who was written extensively about
freewriting, discuss how it helps him write
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDUn1c4uxUE
• Build your own background on nearly any topic at
www.wikipedia.com. Take a look at the Discussion page of
most entries to show your students how argumentation in
writing occurs.
• Get more paragraph frames at David Wray’s homepage:
http://www.warwick.ac.uk/staff/D.J.Wray/Ideas/frames.html