When reading and learning from an academic text, it requires the reader to have a certain background knowledge. Every lesson plan will have the students to acquire an assumed knowledge or vocabulary. Such as learning geometry requires you to know the soh cah toa or what a trapezoid is. The revolution war would require students to know about colonies. As for physics, most students are expected to understand how to solve an algebraic equation.
The fact is, there will be students who lack the background knowledge for the lesson plan. Students that lack a background for a reading assignment will become much more difficult for them to understand the text.
Teachers will compensate for this in two way. The first is when student don't do the reading or don't understand it, teachers will then usually present the key material. The second is when teachers avoid readings all together and teach with what is on the board. These two methods will eventually teach students that careful listening will help them gather all the information that they need.
This brings on an evolution, lesson plans should revolve around building academic background so that when a student read an academic text that they will learn new information. This method is presumed to be Frontloading.
There are three situations when Frontloading and they are:
- With much knowledge
- With Diverse knowledge
- With insufficient knowledge
Diverse knowledge is when students come with a partial knowledge on the subject that may or may not be correct. Providing key words or vocabulary and having them make a connection based of their knowledge is one method that help.
Students with insufficient knowledge will usually need frontloading in the form of relatable or simple text such as that of a video or sections in a book rather than a whole chapter.
Along with this you will need students to actively learn outside of academic texts, one suggestion from the text book is that have your students write what the know and what they don't and have them look it up on google or however they wish to (Buehl 157). This can bring them into another discipline and have them learning more than the subject matter.
I completely agree with you that students need to actively learn outside the academic texts because academic texts are not going to necessarily cover everything that the student needs to know. From my experience in tutoring grade school students in literature, I have found that students that do not understand a certain event in history or a certain concept in a story do not understand what they read, and by not understanding they are labeled as bad readers because they are also unable to think critically on the topic. This is also why I really like the strategy of having students look up a concept on Google so that they are more informed on the topic they are reading in the texts. By having that prior knowledge, they can understand what they are reading and and be able to think critically on the topic without having to use context clues to figure out what is being taught to them.
ReplyDeleteI like the concept of diverse knowledge because I feel that is the most accurate representation of education and lesson plans. In my experience, students usually have an idea of an answer to an essential question or reading from a text, but either have a misunderstanding or a misrepresentation of the topic. Bridging the gap between sorta of knowing and mastering a concept, is the vocabulary and key words you referenced. I feel that this approach is effective because just clarifying text and important themes for students with partial knowledge or understanding can result in complete comprehension. Also, looking at outside sources for information can help when students have partial knowledge (there are a lot of wikipedia articles).
ReplyDeleteHi, William thanks for a really insightful blog post! I really like the concept of front loading. I think it is very crucial that our students have some sort of background knowledge before engaging with a text. If a student does not have some kind of background knowledge, then I think they can get discouraged, frustrated, and unmotivated. Starting each class with what we went over, I think is very helpful to refresh student's memory. Also, going over important vocabulary words will also provide students an opportunity to connect what they learned to what they will learn in class.
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