Give them Something to Talk About by Ruthie Swibel

Thankfully, over the past few years there has been a tremendous focus on the critical importance of phonics and phonemic awareness in building the foundational literacy skills children need to be successful readers. I’m going to touch on a subject that has gotten a lot of press recently (well, for those of us who like to read nerdy publications about reading) but that hasn’t been completely assimilated into practice in the elementary grades; building background knowledge. Have you heard the saying that up until 3rd grade children are learning to read and after 3rd grade they read to learn? We are going to shake that up a bit. Even before students have the decoding skills to independently read complex text and gain knowledge through reading, we must provide them access to complex text to build their background knowledge. This is highly effective when done through read-alouds and can be reinforced through independent audio book listening. I’m not taking away any importance from the role of learning to decode. It is essential and so is background knowledge. 

Schools have become obsessed with teaching reading comprehension through the use of comprehension strategies instead of teaching content knowledge. We love to ask students, “What is the main idea? What are the supporting details?” Here are three comprehension strategies I often see: 

1) Reread if it doesn’t make sense. Well, if you lack background knowledge on the subject, rereading likely won’t help a great deal. 

2) Ask yourself questions. If you haven’t understood the passage, you likely don’t have enough information to ask yourself helpful questions. 

3) And my least-favorite—summarize. If you haven’t understood what you read then the summarization will likely look like taking various sentences from the passage and plopping them together without really synthesizing any of the information. 

The reason why all of these strategies stymy kids is because these strategies are dependent on having enough comprehension of content knowledge in order to be able to use them. We often try to “activate'' background knowledge before we read to students by asking questions or providing bits of information. But what if students don’t have the information to activate? Providing content knowledge is the best way to create an even playing field for our students. Knowledge creates more knowledge. As the journalist and author Natalie Wexler likes to say, “knowledge is like velcro.” You need to have knowledge so that more knowledge has somewhere to stick. The great thing about building knowledge in the early grades (besides that the payoffs downstream are immense!) is that young children love to be experts! Most children delight in learning content and proudly boast their knowledge to any willing listener. Building knowledge through read-alouds is also correlated to building oral language skills; something that is well-documented in research to contribute to better reading outcomes. 

Dr. Susan Neuman, Professor of Literacy Education at NYU, recommends creating a knowledge-building framework by thinking of topics vs. themes. What’s the difference? Topics tend to cover a longer time period with vocabulary words that are connected based on the content; this helps create a knowledge network. It is a huge win in terms of comprehension

outcomes if you can teach children how words and ideas relate to each other and a larger concept. Themes tend to be shorter in duration and include information and vocabulary words that have loose, if any, connection with each other. Here are 5 research-based principles that will build knowledge networks for your students: 

1) Don’t go too fast. Stay on a topic for two (or three if engagement is high) weeks. It takes time to develop depth of knowledge and associated vocabulary. You are developing order and structure around big ideas and this takes time. 

2) Don’t start read-alouds with a picture walk. A picture walk is when you show students a book’s pictures before reading and ask them to hypothesize what happens in the story based on what they see. Students can develop the wrong idea during picture walks and it can be difficult for them to let go of these ideas. In a few words, set the stage for the book and provide a kid-friendly definition of vocabulary words. Dr. Neuman gives this example, “This book is about a cave. A cave is a hole in a mountain.” Short, sweet, and on to the book! With this approach you begin the lesson with everyone having the same entry point; the same information. 

3) Use multiple genres over the course of the time you study a topic. It can be wonderful to start with a predictable story book that children are very comfortable with. This allows co-participation and emotional connection. Next, move on to information books on the same topic. These information books will have the dense language you need to build vocabulary and content knowledge, but narrative language tends to be easier for young children and by starting with a storybook you give them a comfortable starting point. 

4) Distributed review. Always try to provide opportunities to review topics over time. Space the review out over the course of various intervals. Even better, as you build topics, create cross-connections over time between the topics as you review. For most children, you need to provide these cross-connections explicitly. You are building knowledge networks in the brain and this is something that doesn’t happen without explicit instruction for most children. You can’t leave connection-making to chance; design these opportunities with intention. 

5) Intentional opportunities for language engagement. There is extensive research that shows the importance of oral language as it relates to literacy outcomes. We need our children to be able to understand and use complex language structures, vocabulary, and syntax. Teachers tend to be a chatty bunch (I include myself; guilty!) and can, with the best intentions, talk too much while children are left to do too much listening. To help frame this idea of encouraging children to speak more, Neuman uses a wonderful phrase to describe the ideal talk between teachers and students as a, “conversational duet.” Research shows that the amount and quality of conversational interaction between students and teachers has a dramatic effect on expressive language, which directly impacts the development of content knowledge and 

comprehension. It makes sense: if students can talk about a topic, they have a much better chance of being able to comprehend it when they read it. 

So, let's give them something to talk about! While all emergent readers need decodable books (I can’t emphasize this enough; they are essential), decodable books will not provide the juicy vocabulary words or content knowledge that will build comprehension. We have to provide the knowledge through content-rich books and discussions.