| By carefully previewing a text before students read it, you can help them fill in the gaps in their background knowledge and vocabulary.
Previewing and Introducing a Story When introducing a story to students, you can fully prepare them to make meaning from the text they're about to read. To do this effectively, it's important that you preview the text.
- Look for places where students might struggle so that you are prepared to answer questions and clarify unfamiliar or complicated ideas when they arise in the story.
- Mark challenging words, new meanings for familiar vocabulary, and specialized vocabulary that is key to understanding the text. Select at least five of these words to teach explicitly before students read.
- Mark similes, metaphors, and idioms students may stumble over. Plan activities for understanding this figurative language, such as webbing or visualization exercises.
Background Knowledge Understanding the setting of a story makes the reading experience richer and improves students' comprehension. As you preview the text, ask yourself:
- What current events are similar to those in the story? Are there similar events that will help students connect their knowledge to the story?
- How can I help students visualize the setting? Show illustrations, videos, or paintings of the story's time and setting to help students better visualize it.
You can work with students to build background by:
- having them brainstorm all they know about a topic. Then have them categorize this information.
- reading a picture book or short story that introduces the topic.
- sharing pictures, movies, or Web sites that introduce the topic.
Predicting Story Outcomes
There is evidence that asking children to predict upcoming events in a story, allows them to recall story elements and respond to questions about the text with greater clarity and accuracy (Anderson, Wilkinson, and Mason, 1991).
Help children make predictions about what they are going to read, read to confirm their predictions, and revise or make new predictions as they read. As children make predictions, they learn to make inferences, or use information and background knowledge to make meaning.
Special Education Focus: Fill in the Background
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Struggling readers should learn strategies that allow them to extract information from textbooks without being able to read every word. Yet these students often approach a text without any strategy and read each word laboriously in sequence. Selective, strategic reading becomes especially important for students who read slowly. Struggling readers often need direct teaching of background information before they read. Teachers can provide this background information by preparing props, maps, pictures, or anecdotes. When they don't know, tell them!
The teacher can:
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have students complete a graphic organizer while giving them background information orally.
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ask students to verbalize answers to questions before they write those answers down.
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direct student groups to go on a "treasure hunt" to answer questions using organizing features such as headings, indexes, captions, and graphics.
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