Is there evidence demonstrating that the time spent on developing background knowledge and oracy positively impacts student learning?

Research has long indicated that building background knowledge and developing oracy is beneficial for children. Strategies such as the KWL chart have been used in classrooms nationwide in attempts to activate and build students’ background knowledge and oracy skills, and to peak their interest before reading a text. However, when strategies such as these are used with language learners and students with limited language skills, the results are not as beneficial as teachers had hoped them to be. What is the problem? The KWL chart is research-based, so why doesn’t it work?

As it turns out, in order for a student to engage with a strategy such as a KWL chart, some prerequisite language, skills, and experiences are required. A student needs to have some level of understanding of the content or have had experiences with the topic, and have sufficient language skills to share how their understanding and experiences relate to the topic. If the student does not have the language or experience, they cannot participate in this activity successfully. Additionally, when strategies such as the KWL chart are used as the initial activity to build background knowledge, a lot of room is left for misconceptions to develop.

Consider, for example, a teacher using a KWL chart prior to reading a text about the rain forest. In this classroom, half of the students are language learners at varying levels of proficiency. Additionally, although all students in the classroom have had a variety of life experiences, the nearest rainforest is over 1,000 miles away. When this activity is used as the initial activity to activate background knowledge (whether whole group or small group), only some students are able to participate: those with previous knowledge of or experience with rainforests who also have the language to express their understanding of this topic.

The students that have heard about, read about, or visited a rainforest will be able to share some information to be placed on the “K” column of the chart. The students that think they know what a rainforest is might offer misinformation, such as “there were dangerous animals in the rainforest and that is why people burned them down. Rainforests don’t exist any more.” This inaccuracy has the potential to de-rail the classroom conversation and focus of the lesson if the teacher attempts to correct the statement. On the other hand, if the teacher does not pause to rectify the misconception, she risks the possibility of it solidifying in that student’s mind (and in the mind of other students). At the same time, the language learners in the classroom (depending on their level of proficiency) are not able to add much, if anything at all, to the chart or the conversation due to limitations with expressive and receptive language, reducing the significance of this activity for them.

Does this mean that there isn’t a place for the beloved KWL chart (and activities like it) in a classroom full of diverse learners? As it turns out, there is! There are just a few things that teachers need to do first in order to ensure that ALL students can participate meaningfully in the learning experience.

In order to ensure that activities such the KWL chart are meaningful to all students, academically enriching experiences and language scaffolds within a specific context have to be provided to the students. Building background knowledge is defined as the provision of activities and experiences to all students in a classroom to ensure students have the prerequisite knowledge of a topic in order to access the new knowledge that is to be obtained about that topic. The language scaffolds teachers provide contribute to the development of oracy, which is defined as the skills and strategies that are required in order to be able to engage with a literacy-based task.

Let’s go back to our rainforest example. An initial activity to build oracy and background knowledge could be to have strategic student pairs look at printed pictures of a rain forest in a gallery walk. Sentence prompts such as “I see…” and “I wonder…” can be provided to students. The teacher can then engage students in a conversation about each picture using words students printed on the charts, and strategically incorporating new academic vocabulary with TPR (even if one of the students listed the academic vocabulary to be introduced on the chart). This ensures that all students are developing the vocabulary necessary to engage with the text. Another activity the teacher could use is Adapted Reader’s Theatre, where the teacher engages students in helping to act out part of a story. For this activity, the students are silent while the teacher explains and acts out the story, but students join the teacher in the movements. As a follow up activity, strategic student pairs can use sentence prompts to engage in a sorting activity to pair the vocabulary word with a sentence and/or picture, or to put the important events from the story in chronological order.

After these experiences, it would be appropriate to introduce the KWL chart to this group of diverse students. At this point, all students have some working knowledge of what a rainforest is and have sufficient language to share this knowledge.

Academically enriching experiences and language building activities must come prior to rigorous learning in order to ensure that all students can access the content. It requires a shift in thinking about where the field trips, virtual tours, experiments, and other such activities are conducted within a unit. Rather than doing them after the learning has occurred, it is important to do them as a way to kick off a unit, to build excitement, background knowledge, and develop the oracy skills students need to be able learn. Additionally, building background knowledge and oracy is not a one-time thing, it is something that has to be developed continuously in order for students to continue accessing new concepts and ideas. This ensures that students have the foundation of knowledge they need in order to incorporate new information and expand that knowledge. While this shift will require more time to “cover” material, the depth at which all students will be able to interact with the information makes it worthwhile.

Next month, I will explain how Jenny, a self-contained teacher in a 50/50 Chinese-English Dual Language program has incorporated activities to build background knowledge and develop oracy into her teaching practice. I will also share some observations she has made about her students’ ability to engage in literacy tasks now that she deliberately plans for building background knowledge and developing oracy. In the meantime, what strategies do you use in your classroom to ensure that all students have sufficient background knowledge and oracy skills to be able to engage in your lessons?