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Provide Context (Non-Fiction)

Tags

ELA: Reading ^21st Century Skills All Ages Strategy

Skills

Auditory Processing Working Memory Attention Verbal Reasoning Abstract Reasoning Processing Speed

Provide Context (Non-Fiction)

If your student lacks general knowledge or interest in a topic or struggles with reading comprehension

Instruction And Practice

  1. Objective: Students will improve their non-fiction comprehension if they have context and a general understanding of the topic before diving into a dense textbook or journal article.
  2. Before students begin reading, pre-teach any relevant background information such as historical or cultural information, how the topic is applicable to them, and key vocabulary. Consider making this an interactive experience, perhaps by reading about it online together in Wikipedia, a children's book review web site, or watch a brief video lesson.
  3. While students might resist having to learn before they read, help them understand that this approach will make the reading more enjoyable and understandable.

Why It Works (the Science Of Learning)!

Instruction leads to more robust learning when it guides the learner's attention on the most important elements (Dunlap et al., 2011). When teachers provide context first, the more "hooks" the student has to understand and keep the details in memory making it easier and faster to understand. As studied by E D Hirsch, Domain knowledge in advance of reading is proven to increase fluency and enable deeper comprehension