Activating prior knowledge in reading

A student doesn’t read a text in isolation. They never read something new, because they are bringing something to the table when reading any text. They are bringing their knowledge, experience, opinions or prejudices to a text at any one time.

I always find the opening of a novel such a disorientating experience. Where am I? Who am I? What are the rules of this world featured in this story? By about chapter 2 or 3, I am a bit happier, because I have orientered the story and built a mental model in my brain. Paper 1 Question 3 is like my nightmare. Instead of giving us a complete story, we have the opening chapter of a novel. Students have to orientate it quickly and say something clever about it. That’s why Question 3 is a nightmare. It asks students to orientate the opening of a story and explore the subtext of something unformed and incomplete. Writers don’t convey big ideas, in novels, through their opening pages. 

Activating prior knowledge isn’t something that we explicitly teach or that students are particularly good at. As teachers, we might show a photograph of something or give a small explanation or description of something we feel students need, such as what an eel is.  Prior knowledge tends to be sporadic or left to chance. But, little bits of knowledge help the reader to orientate what is going on. These breadcrumbs are important. You cannot just work things out in isolation. Supposition has its place in fiction, but we need something concrete to build a mental model. We work with the knowledge that we have. 

The opening letterbox, as I call it, from the exam paper is probably one of the most important pieces of information for students to understand the extract. It has a number of different points of knowledge to activate. 

 

• What do you know about the beginning of a story? What should it do? 

• What do you know about the early 1900s? 

• What do you know about the name Rosabel? 

• What do you know about being lower class? 

• What do you know about hat shops? 

• What do you know about being a girl who has to work in the 1900s? 

All too often, students will gloss over the letterbox for the sake of the story. It is like some sort of addiction: move out the way, while I highlight every simile and adverb in sight. They read the text in isolation. Therefore, the understanding is largely in isolation. 

I would say my lessons are always about activating prior knowledge, but I am not always explicit about the process. Tom - Where did we see this in the last topic? Dalip - what is a toffee? Where would I find one? The knowledge we retrieve in English cannot all fit onto a sheet. We are the subject that uses so many domains of knowledge that you cannot possibly put them down on paper. Instead, students have to use what existing knowledge they have to build a mental model. 

But, if you look at the questions above related to Rosabel, you can see that some relate to History. Who studies History as part of their options? What can you tell me about the 1900s?  

But some of the others don’t need precise knowledge but more about pulling on their experience. I wouldn’t expect students to know the meaning of Rosabel. Beautiful rose. But, students can articulate that they haven’t heard of the name. It sounds exotic. Unusual. Different. Or, they might make the connection with the flower rose. Either way, they could pick up on how her name doesn’t quite match to her lower class status. 

Then there is the hat shop. An interesting one. On the surface, it looks simple. A shop that sells hats. This is where the knowledge around shops comes in. Are hat shops common today? Where would we see a hat shop today?  Why do people buy hats? What kind of people would buy hats?  This, of course, is relational knowledge, based on their experience. They look at hat shops in relation to other shops.  How are hat shops different from shoe shops? 

Sometimes, it is hard to recall prior knowledge around things, because the students’ brains have a lot of things to search through. One of the easiest questions I find to unlock prior knowledge is this: Is it a good or a bad thing? Is being lower class a positive or negative thing? No. Why? Sometimes, we have that prior knowledge, but we don’t know how to articulate. But, we have that emotional knowledge. We know if something is good or bad. 

As you can see, before we even read the text we can form quite a bit of context for the story by exploring what knowledge we have, exploring our experience around the subject and  exploring our emotional response to something. 

What do you know about hat shops? 

• Not common 

• Rich use them for special occasions 

• Better than other jobs - selling a luxury item 

• Dealing with rich people all day 

We are being asked to do knowledge retrieval at the start of lessons, yet in English we do it all the time and, actually, in different ways. From the 5 questions based on the letterbox, we are recalling precise knowledge, recalling feelings and recalling experiences. Then, based on those they are building relational facts, their own opinions and their own opinions.  

What activating prior knowledge does is help frame the context for events. The Alex Cold extract employs prior knowledge that is a little closer to home. 

What is it like to live with your parents? 

What is it like to have two younger sisters? 

What is it like to live in a small American town?

What is it like when your mother becomes ill? 

Then, there is another question we can ask to understand the context even further: How would a typical boy deal with all those things? 

I genuinely think we undersell and underuse prior knowledge during lessons. We use it for high end things like techniques or general understanding, but we don’t use it enough with formulating ideas and thinking. We leave a lot unsaid. Students need to grapple with unseen reading texts and working with what they do know helps to secure understanding of what they don’t know. They are tent pegs to hold things together. Without exploring the student’s prior knowledge, we don’t know what we need to teach them. 

What is your knowledge of …? 

What would you feel in that situation…? 

What do people think of …. 

What would we expect to see when …? 

What usually happens in this situation…? 

I see that often teachers preload students with knowledge around a text, when actually there isn’t a great need to. Exploratory thinking is needed initially and throughout the reading. If we want students to be active readers, we need them to think and recall knowledge actively. Before we start, what do you know about X? 

I would argue that the first part of reading a text is the hardest. It is where we lose students. If they don’t have a clear grasp of a mental model, no matter how simple or complex, they can progress further. That can be an emotional model - this is a bad situation. Or, it can be a finely precise model. Either way, the student is building something in their head. Their knowledge of the context is key. Therefore, we need to help them build these contexts and show them how they have the knowledge to do that. 

Picture books offer students a context and a ready formed mental model to build the story around. They can see it. They can see what Winnie the Witch is doing as they listen / read the words. They have a clear context for the story. Text without pictures don't have that context. Students have to construct the context themselves. And that is why prior knowledge is so important. Prior knowledge is about context.

Thanks for reading, 

Xris