Before Reading
The most powerful time to support student readers is before students begin to read. Before reading strategies help students activate prior knowledge and focus their attention on the purpose of the reading.
Students learn best when they have adequate background knowledge about a topic. The more teachers help students to understand concepts prior to reading about them, the better students will read. By "frontloading" instruction-- shifting teaching to before student reading-- teachers can accomplish a number of important objectives. They can discover what students already know or do not know about a topic, build relevant background with students who are beginning a reading with insufficient knowledge, spotlight key vocabulary, and pique student interest in reading about a topic.
Students learn best when they have adequate background knowledge about a topic. The more teachers help students to understand concepts prior to reading about them, the better students will read. By "frontloading" instruction-- shifting teaching to before student reading-- teachers can accomplish a number of important objectives. They can discover what students already know or do not know about a topic, build relevant background with students who are beginning a reading with insufficient knowledge, spotlight key vocabulary, and pique student interest in reading about a topic.
The Importance of Frontloading
Many students have problems when they launch into a reading assignment "cold". They may be unsure of what the material is about and may have not thought about what they already know about the topic. They glide along-- reading the words-- but may be clueless about what they are attempting to read and unable to make sense of what they've "read" when finished.
Imagine a student's background knowledge as a file cabinet. The file cabinet represents everything that student knows about the world-- his experiences, his perceptions, his reality. The knowledge in the cabinet is divided into drawers, then into sections within drawers, and finally into files within those sections. Sometimes new information goes into existing file folders. If the student's file folder is already full of prior knowledge about a topic, then reading about that topic will allow them to add new information to that file folder. However, if the file folder is empty or non-existant, then reading comprehension will suffer. Frontloading techniques allow teachers to help students access information in existing file folders or to create file folders for those students who bring no prior knowledge to the reading.
Imagine a student's background knowledge as a file cabinet. The file cabinet represents everything that student knows about the world-- his experiences, his perceptions, his reality. The knowledge in the cabinet is divided into drawers, then into sections within drawers, and finally into files within those sections. Sometimes new information goes into existing file folders. If the student's file folder is already full of prior knowledge about a topic, then reading about that topic will allow them to add new information to that file folder. However, if the file folder is empty or non-existant, then reading comprehension will suffer. Frontloading techniques allow teachers to help students access information in existing file folders or to create file folders for those students who bring no prior knowledge to the reading.