INSTRUCTIONAL LEADER INSTRUCTIONAL LEADER INSTRUCTIONAL LEADER

Building andActivatingBackgroundKnowledge

Teachers canincrease students'comprehension bybuilding connectionsbetween new contentand what studentsalready know.

By Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey

Douglas Fisher (dfisher@mail sdsu.edu) isprofessor of teacher education at San DiegoState University and a teacher leader at HealthSciences High and Middle College.

Nancy Frey (nfrey@mail.sdsu, edu) is professorof teacher education at San Diego State Uni-versity and a teacher leader at Health SciencesHigh and Middle College in San Diego, CA,

Watch the Video!Watch a video about usingand activating backgroundknowledge:www.principals.org/pll 21 Ofisher.

62 1 Principal Leadership I DECEMBER 2010

S tart with what you know is goodadvice in lesson planning. Whenteachers begin with known

information, they can build students'understanding of new content. Un-fortunately, in too many classroomsteachers begin with new informa-tion and students are left behind. Forexample, we observed a well-meaningteacher introduce the topic of radio-active decay by talking about energyloss, parent nuclides, and daughternuclides. The students in the classdutifully took notes, but when asked,they said that they had no idea whattheir teacher was talking about.

As part of the lesson, studentsworked in groups to read their as-signed text. One of the sentencesin the text read, "One Becquerel isdefined as one transformation (ordecay) per second." The sentence isfairly straightforward. It defines aterm, a "Becquerel." But the defini-tion assumes tremendous backgroundknowledge and understanding ofvocabulary. What's a "transformation,"anyway?

In many classrooms where textdifficulty is a problem, students aretaught comprehension strategies, suchas predicting, visualizing, questioning,and inferring. But would any of thosecognitive strategies help studentsunderstand the sentence from thetextbook? Probably not. Comprehen-sion strategies cannot compensate formissing background information.

Teachers must ensure that stu-dents can make sense of the content,regardless of how difficult it may seemto novices. To do that job well, teach-ers must build and activate students'background knowledge-two of themost important things that they cando to improve student understand-ing. Thankfully, there are a number

of ways that teachers can build andactivate background knowledge.

Direct and IndirectBackground BuildingIn general, background knowledge canbe built in two ways: through directexperiences or through indirect expe-riences (Marzano, 2004). Direct expe-riences-such as field trips, labs, simu-lations, and guest speakers-are veryeffective ways to ensure that studentshave relevant background knowledge.Unfortunately, direct experiences areoften expensive and time-consuming.As the Internet continues to grow andmore sites are interactive, teachers canbuild background knowledge in directbut virtual ways. For example, a his-tory teacher uses the Louvre MuseumWeb site to show his students Islamicart that they have likely never seen inperson, and a biology teacher has herstudents complete a number of virtualdissection labs as part of their practicework.

Indirect experiences build back-ground knowledge in more subtleways. For example, teacher modeling(see our column in the Novemberissue) shows students how teachersthink aloud about content. In addi-tion, reading a wide range of textson a given topic builds backgroundknowledge. When students read textsat their reading level, their under-standing of the topic improves.

For example, in a physics class,students read for 10 minutes everyday. They have choices of what toread-all aligned with the topic underinvestigation-that cover a wide rangeof reading difficulty. When Amandaread about potential and kinetic en-ergy in an article about roller coasters,she built her background knowledge.When Jeffrey read about a crime

scene that involved Boyle's law, hebuilt his background knowledge.

In addition to teacher modelingand wide reading, background knowl-edge can be built as students interactwith one another. During productivegroup work, students discuss theirknowledge. In doing so, they sharetheir understanding of the world andget a glimpse into the understandingof others. Consider this excerpt of anexchange between a group of studentsstudying the stock market crash of1929 in their U.S. History class.

Jessica: So I get that peoplebuy stocks and that the valuewent down a lot and peoplelost their money. But whatexactly is a stock?

Marco: My dad talks aboutstocks and how he tradesthem, sells them, and buysthem. I asked him once whatwe really bought, and he saidpaper. When I was confused,he said it was an investment,like money in the bank butwith more risk.

Adrianna: I think I under-stand stocks. It's part of thecompany, called "equity." Likeyour house or condo. You haveequity, or a percentage, of theownership until you pay it off.If the price goes up, you havemore than you paid, but if theprice drops, you have less thanyou paid, but you still owe themoney you borrowed.

Jessica: So, when you buystock, it's like you own a pieceof the company? And thecompany uses your money to

operate? And if they do a goodjob, you'll get your moneyback, plus some?

As their discussion continued,these three students validated and ex-panded their understanding of stocksand how the market works. They builttheir background knowledge indirectlyas they shared their understandingwith one another. It's important thatthe teacher check for understandingperiodically to ensure that misconcep-tions don't arise from group interactions.

Activating BackgroundKnowledgeAlthough developing backgroundknowledge is essential and instruc-tional leaders should look for thisin the lessons they observe, it's alsoimportant to notice opportunities foractivating students' relevant back-ground knowledge. Students may havethe necessary background knowledgebut not use it when it would come inhandy.

Teachers can activate students'background knowledge in a number ofways (Fisher & Frey, 2009). As an in-structional leader, part of your role inobserving instruction is to determinewhether students' background knowl-edge was activated. In other words, it'snot enough to look for instructionaltechniques, classroom managementprocedures, grade-level content, andbackground knowledge development.Putting all of this to use requires at-tention to the ways in which back-ground knowledge is activated duringa lesson.

Activating background knowledgeused to be considered an anticipatoryactivity-done at the outset of the les-son and often used to capture studentattention and serve as a motivator.

A tho ugh developingbackground knowledge isessential and instructionalleaders should look f)r thisin the lessons they obserue,it's also important to noticeopportunities for activatingstudents' reletantbackground knowledge.

DECEMBER 2010 1 Prncipal Leadership 1 63

INSTRUCTIONAL LEADER INSTRUCTIONAL LEADER INSTRUCTIONAL LEADER

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64 e Principal Leadership I DECEMBER 2010

This type of student engagementshould not be limited to lesson open-ers but should be integrated into theoverall flow the lesson. Some of themost common ways that teacherscan activate background knowledgeinclude:

"* Quickwrites, in which studentswrite for a few minutes aboutan assigned topic. Writing ontopic requires that they thinkabout the topic.

"* KWL charts, in which studentsshare with one another whatthey know about a topic, whatthey want to know aboutthat topic, and then what thelearned about the topic at theend of the lesson.

"* Checklists, in which studentsare reminded of the knowl-edge, skills, and behaviorsnecessary to complete a task.Teacher-created checklists,especially ones on whichstudents can add items, helpstudents keep relevant infor-mation in mind as they work.

"* Sentence and paragraphframes, in which students usea linguistic scaffold so thattheir attention is focused onthe content rather than thelanguage required to com-municate their understanding.

For example, as a scaffold for acompare and contrast essay, anEnglish teacher gave studentsthe following frame:_"and share several char-acteristics, including_This frame unlocked a stu-dent's thinking and he sharedthe following with his group:"A Streetcar Named Desire andCat on A Hot Tin Roof shareseveral characteristics, includ-ing the fact that they wereboth written by Tennessee Wil-liams, both deal with alcohol-ism, and both have issues withsexuality."

These tools are examples of howto help students make connectionsbetween the known and the unknown.Instructional leaders should under-stand the importance of backgroundknowledge and give teachers feedbackabout developing and activating it. I'L

REFERENCES0 Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2009). Backgroundknowledge: The missing piece of the compre-hension puzzle. Portsmouth, NH: Heine-mann.N Marzano, R. J. (2004). Building back-ground knowledge for academic achievement:Research on what works in schools. Alexan-dria, VA: ASCD.

Activating background knowledge used to"be considered an anticipatory activity-Idone at the outset of the lesson and oftenused to capture student attention and serveas a motivator.

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Fisher, Douglas; Frey, Nancy

Building and Activating Background Knowledge

Princ Leadership 11 no4 D 2010 p. 62-42156-2113

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