A bitter irony fell over her targeted lesson on inferencing.
“We were asking kids to take stuff from the text, use their own background knowledge, and put that together to make an inference. But if they didn’t have the background knowledge, then how could they possibly do that?” she recalls.
Until then her high-performing Queensland school had been intent on delivering the focused lessons in a bid to usher along students’ progress in reading comprehension.
After some initial gains brought on by explicit instruction, reading achievement had stalled across the board. The focus on inferencing was deemed the answer. That is, until little Johnny spoke up.
“It was at that point where myself and my colleagues said, ‘there’s a piece missing here’.
“And we couldn’t find [what it was], because our school was actually being held up as an example of great practice.”
Spurred into action, Robinson went on to discover Natalie Wexler’s work around ‘the knowledge gap’, soon realising the solid link between background knowledge and reading comprehension skills.
Wexler, an education journalist and author, contends there’s a long-overlooked issue that lies at the heart of educational inequity: the failure on the part of most primary schools, and especially those serving low-income children, to systematically build their knowledge of the world.
Wexler flags that cognitive science has shown how possessing relevant background knowledge and a broad vocabulary is the most crucial factor leading to success in reading comprehension.
She posits that for every year disadvantaged children spend in school without building this knowledge, they fall further behind their peers. And by the time they get to high school, it’s often too late to play catch up.
Now running her own educational coaching business, Robinson says the prospect of building students’ background knowledge can seem a daunting and all-encompassing task for teachers who are aligning their practice to the science of reading.
Educational coach and ex-teacher Jillian Robinson will break down some practical strategies to build students' background knowledge at a Think Forward Educators event this evening.
Thankfully, she notes, Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion framework offers some sound practical strategies for Year 3-12 teachers to break the process down.
These include drawing upon:
- embedded non-fiction texts
- embellishments
- knowledge organisers, and;
- vocabulary as knowledge
“One is just being conscious that you need to build background knowledge,” she begins.
“For example, if [your class is] reading the novel Blueback by Tim Winton, ‘Blueback’ is actually a blue groper.
“So, early on in this unit of work, students can stop reading the actual text and go to a small, non-fiction information text about blue gropers to build that background knowledge of that fish and its environment, what it eats and does.
“Then when they come back to the text, there are new connections that you can make – [it’s about] supporting fiction with some non-fiction texts.”
Another strategy involves ‘knowledge feeding’ or injecting ‘embellishments’ whilst students are reading a given text.
This might involve bringing in relevant props, like a handkerchief for example, and explaining the history and context behind it, Robinson explains.
Creating a list of key definitions or useful terms is also helpful for students as they embark on a new text reading, the expert says.
This serves as a handy retrieval tool, ensuring crucial information is embedded in long-term memory and ready to be accessed when needed.
“It’s the type of knowledge that we want them to be able to embed … so that rather than every time we say ‘metaphor’, they have to think, ‘oh, what’s that again’? … and it’s taking up working memory space.”
Robinson is a fierce Teach Like a Champion advocate and says the strategies it promotes are drawn from “looking at those teachers who had exceeded against the odds in difficult schools”.
Two ‘life changing’ trips to the US in 2014 and 2017, which saw the educator work with Lemov and his team, really cemented her knowledge in the principles and techniques it backs.
“All of my teaching career I’ve been teaching in schools in low socio-economic areas, and in some schools with very high in Indigenous student populations and students with disabilities, so [any teaching tactic] that I’d seen before, I was never guaranteed that it would work for my context.
“But seeing the amazing results that were happening through [Teach Like A Champion], knowing that [approach] actually came about by watching great teachers’ work, was just really encouraging.
“It’s highly practical, which is what I loved about it.”
Robinson will be sharing her expertise on how to build background knowledge to boost reading comprehension skills at a Think Forward Educators online event this evening. You can register for the free virtual session here.
