In Buehl’s writing in chapter 3, he talks about academic knowledge gaps and how they are the “starting point in mentoring students as readers, writers, and thinkers within our disciplines” (Buehl, 2017). In a typical science ACT or SAT reading, there may be texts that require extensive prior knowledge.
We need to confront these academic knowledge gaps in the students as quickly and as early as possible. We, as educators, cannot assume that these students have knowledge of scientific, mathematical, or historical events from their out-of-school lives. What the students will know from those lives is interactions, sociology, psychology, the soft sciences that are learned through observation of people. The way we teach these students needs to relate to what they already know and that is the interactions with the people around them. We can take their prior knowledge and use it to build a better understanding of any topic and subject. Comparing historic events such as the Declaration of Independence to a long break up text like we did in class is an excellent example of using prior knowledge to build a better understanding and even build an interest of the topic in the students that wouldn’t pay attention otherwise.
There needs to be a point where we realize that some students are coming into the classroom with the knowledge already known while others are coming in with no prior knowledge at all. Some students, like Buehl’s son Jeremy, come in with documentaries watched, books read, topics studied extensively that give him all the knowledge needed in order to coast right through the Civil War in 8th grade. While another student is in the class realizing that they have very few opportunities to make “text-to-self” connections to what is being taught. As the students around them, like Jeremy, share how their out-of-school lives link to the curricular topics, this other student is sitting there with nothing. The student can “likely have extensive informal knowledge—interpersonal strengths, community-based know-how, popular culture savvy, skills with animals or agriculture, street smarts, and so forth” and is never able to capitalize on that knowledge because they do not see a connection with their personal life and the classroom. If we can help them make connections like the one we did in class with all of the topics, I think we would succeed in getting the information remembered by these students that may not come in already knowing the information that we are teaching.
Hi Anthony,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your story about your experience taking the ACT. That's such a frustrating passage for them to use, because I'd imagine there's a huge gap in prior knowledge between different students taking the test. Some high schools may have earth science or geology courses, but I know that a lot, at least my alma mater, do not. Especially when it comes to a passage like that, in which your comprehension hinges on prior knowledge of vocabulary and geologic processes, it puts some students at a severe disadvantage. I remember that my high school did a day of ACT prep, and it was focused on strategies that we could use to score higher (which portions and questions to skip if we were running low on time, ways to tell which answers were correct without fully understanding the question). In light of what chapter 3 of Buehl says, maybe that time would have been better spent reviewing prior assumed knowledge, at least for the science section.
Yes it was very frustrating. The only problem with it was that the ACT prep classes were taught after school, for money. My school charged its students to take ACT prep and if we took it we would have been prepared for that passage. Unfortunately, 51% of the school is below the poverty line and can not afford to even stay after school let alone pay for the class.
DeleteAnthony,thanks for sharing. I think the gap between different students taking test exists. But I really think this is a hard thing to change. And it gonna take a lot of time to change it. I remember when I was in high school . Most of my classmates really don’t like math and their grades of math is terrible. I think this is because they don’t have interest in math and they don’t want to spend time on it. But some of they were really good at History. I think that is because they really like history and that is why they choose this class( our classes were based on subject). Also, my history teacher is great that always can use some strategies like making the background information into stories to attract students. I think this is very important for us to do as an educator to make sure every student has their chance to engage the knowledge of subjects.
ReplyDeleteHi Anthony,
ReplyDeleteI think you made a very good point at connections between the topics which be taught in the classroom setting and the real daily lives are essential in contributing how well students will learn and how far they can go. In the classroom setting, most of the time, students are spending their energy on studying theorems and listening to someone's stories. Some students didn't learn from it because they totally got lost – it too far away from their actual experiences. Students' diverse cultural background make educators have difficulty in planning lectures. In order to resolve this conflict or limit the academic gaps among students, I would say to encourage them to read more and extend reading are beneficial.
I believe that some teachers forget that not all students are the same and have the same background academically and culturally. I heard many times in class where a teacher says we won't go over this too much because we should have learned it previously. I did not have a problem with this in a math class because my brain remembers math stuff more than other classes. However, I know this isn't the same for many of my classmates. There were many times I did a problem and I had a classmate ask me for help and I just had to remind them of something from before and they usually got it. There is a lot of pressure to learn so much curriculum so a teacher may not want to go over previous knowledge again, but its pretty necessary sometimes to understand the new knowledge. You also made points that it also has to be interesting which is something we discuss a lot of making curriculum relevant to the students lives. A teacher can hit two birds with one stone in trying to see where their students are with their prior knowledge and see what they deem culturally relevant by talking with their students.
ReplyDeleteSome students can remember prior knowledge better than others, that's just how some people are. I think one way we can help students with recalling the information is using things like that mind-mapping strategy we learned about in class, where it's something we can go back and refer to and something that's always at hand. If we're constantly exposed to something, we're most likely to remember it.
ReplyDeleteI like your point about how students come in with all sorts of different breaths of knowledge. I also agree that we should utilize what our students are experts in, what are their hobbies and their interests and how can we use this? This is a good way to influence our lesson planning to suit our students needs!
ReplyDeleteI think we need to facilitate there ability to make connections between taught information and the things going on in their daily lives. Even if we don't know what their interests are, we should be able to help them connect it to things themselves.
DeleteMy follow up question for you would be how do you find a balance between teaching to the middle and letting students explore and advance their learning based on their prior knowledge? - kiley
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't know for sure since I'm not experienced in doing that, but I would say that helping them connect their interests with the subject would be an easy way of doing it. Helping them make connections on their own would be a good start.
DeleteI agree that background knowledge is vitally important for students to deeper understand the disciplinary. Indeed, students tend to study subjects that are familiar and interesting to them. Thus, as educators, we should pay attention to the interest of students and prior knowledge, rather than assuming that students will complete the study of prior knowledge outside the school. I would say that prior knowledge teaching is a key part of the crriculum, because it will narrow the academic knowledge gaps among the students, and it can also reduce students' misunderstanding of what they learn outside of school.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is important for teachers to know their students' background knowledge in the classroom. Teachers cannot just focus on the content the want to teach to students because the purpose of teaching should be having students understand the knowledge and internalize the knowledge. If students do not have prior knowledge about the lesson, they may not even engage in class, let alone understand it. Therefore, for teachers, it is important to use some strategies to know students' prior knowledge and try to build a connection between their prior knowledge and new knowledge to engage them in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteHey,Anthony. Thank you for your sharing.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you opinion about we educators need to confront the academic knowledge gaps in the students as quickly and as early as possible. Students may grow up in different culture, different environment or even in different countries. There must have something different knowledge they have known, educators should not teach all the students in the same for their different knowledge but to know their difference and choose a proper way of teaching. As you say that some students are coming into the classroom with the knowledge already known while others are coming in with no prior knowledge at all. So, it will be some conflict during the class. Just as the example, in some culture the dog has a positive meaning, and in other culture the dog have a negative meaning. So, there will be a conflict when talking in the same class for different students. Thus, in this situation the contexts is very important and teachers should know the difference between each students and choose a proper way to teach to reduce the misunderstanding and conflicts.
I totally agree, I think these passages should have content that we can actually relate to and find interesting. I remember literally just skimming passages for answers because of how boring they were. I also agree with the point you made about some students having more prior knowledge than others. I definitely think these students may have an advantage over students that do not have the same prior knowledge.
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