I was talking with a kindergarten teacher about her final report cards. She has a grid to complete for each of her students indicating which of the letters they can name and sound out. She told me that a better predictor of a kid’s readiness to read is a screening test that they give kindergartners at the beginning of the year. In that test, she said, if a kid doesn’t know the color names (‘red’, for example) they are probably going to have trouble with schoolwork.
Most people who hear this say, “What!? How could a kid not know the color names in kindergarten?” To properly answer that question we’d need an anthropologist or a social worker, so I can’t go there.
But there is another question we can tackle: What’s so important about knowing the color red? Knowing the colors at age 5 is an indicator of background knowledge. Knowing the colors isn’t the important thing. If it was, we would take the Jay Matthews-approach to the problem and teach the kids what red is, and move on. But it’s not that easy. Knowing the color names is only the tip of the iceberg, which is itself an idiom that requires background knowledge to understand, like any other concept. And that’s my point. We need background knowledge in order to understand what we read and hear people talk about.
Brian Crosby took exception to another Jay Matthews curve ball in which Mr. Matthews doubts whether computers are “helping more kids learn.” Brian wonders what data there is to show that paper and pencils help kids learn. And he counters Jay Matthews’ argument with:
Mr. Mathews and way too many others don’t get it that one of the biggest reasons students are behind in reading is because of their lack of understanding of the world around them and the people and events around them. Most of my own students have their phonics and word attack skills down. What makes reading difficult for them is it is boring to read and near impossible to get meaning from what you read when you don’t understand the significance or humor or horror or sadness or history or science behind what you read.
How do kids get this knowledge? They get it by doing stuff with other people, through discussion and interaction, through songs and stories, and by messing around in a language-rich environment. Brian is right. A pencil never taught a kid to write. Neither will a computer or a televsion teach a kid to read or write. These things facilitate instruction. I am constantly amazed at the stuff my students don’t know, and have never heard about. We run into it all the time when we read-especially in the content areas. In an information-rich age, students still need to have physical knowledge of the world and social contact with caring adults who can guide them and help them to interpret their experiences.
School’s out, and I have no plans. Yeah!
One of my fourth-graders gave me an evaluation.
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You quote Brian Crosby: What makes reading difficult for them is it is boring to read and near impossible to get meaning from what you read when you don’t understand the significance or humor or horror or sadness or history or science behind what you read.
As the father of at least one kid who doesn’t read (so far), I’m interested in the evidence for this. Could I take advantage of the blogosphere’s opportunity to put novices and gurus in touch with each other, to ask what evidence there is for Brian’s statement?
Perhaps relevant, or of interest: I recently blogged about Brian Leamson’s book, Thinking About Teaching and Learning: Developing Habits of Learning With First Year College and University Students. In this book, he mentions some (anthropological?) research done that suggests we (or more specifically the US, I guess) is moving (back) towards a more oral culture (sorry, I don’t have the book in front of me). Assuming this is true, Leamson suggests that college teachers should be concerned to re-inforce the skills of reading and thinking, whilst being aware of where students are coming from and taking appropriate steps (i.e. not blaming them, yet not letting them off the hook either) ” ‘If speaking and listening skills have been impoverished by growing up in a limited linguistic environment, no effort should be spared to enhance those foundational aural/oral skills as a pre-requisite for further literacy skills’ (Hersh, 1996). Getting students to talk is of the essence. Bringing it off, however, is a matter of the greatest delicacy.”
MP, thanks for the question. Funny, I googled activating schema and saw one of my own blog posts near the top, evidence that titles matter.
The theory behind the claim that Brian made, and I quoted, is called schema theory. It is a fundamental understanding of our thinking processes. According to P. David Pearson, Schema theory is a theory about the structure of human knowledge as it is represented in memory. Pearson’s article is a general history of reading in the 20th century.
Here is a more focused article about schema theory in particular.
For mor practical discussions about schema and reading instruction see:
Julie Kendall’s Reading Workshop Journal;
Activating Prior Knowledge at ESOL online;
Increasing Comprehension by Activating Prior Knowledge at the ERIC Digest;
A study guide for Prereading Strategies;
A module from an online course on Reading Processes.
Most of the ideas for reading instruction address activating prior knowledge. I should emphasize once again that the knowledge has to come from somewhere. Most often it won’t be from having people tell each other things, but from experience of the world. The activation of the knowledge through talk and reading creates intertextual connections which is where the learning occurs, connecting the new to the known. A book called Mosaic of Thought has a great chapter on this subject, but is also worth reading as a general introduction to reading comprehension.
Much (embarrassed) gratitude. I (thought I) already knew about schema theory. Obviously I need to go back to school on this topic. This semester, in one class, I’ve been focussing on introducing learning strategies to my students. Last week in class I touched on this topic by showing them the title, a graphic and the first paragraph of a short article, and asking them to use these clues to predict what it would be about. My shallow understanding of schema theory led me to summarize, “Successful comprehension is more likely if you spend some time trying to predict the content.” One of the examples I used (it just happened to be to hand) was a short text entitled “The Church that Lived Again” with a graphic intended to show London’s St Paul’s silhouette surrounded by flames and smoke. Needless to say, none of my (Japanese) students understood the cultural reference. In fact, it wasn’t until I asked them for their responses (predictions) that I realized they didn’t even “see” the flames and smoke: some thought those wavy lines represented hills or mountains, others thought they were waves. I got a lesson.
Your example sounds very much like experiences I commonly have with my primary-grade kids. Whenever I try to anticipate what they probably already understand about a topic, I invariably miss something basic that consumes a large part of the planned lesson. It’s interesting that our expectations and prior knowledge can influence our perceptions, as you point out, as well as our understanding.
Just like when I teach school, I assumed background knowledge when I wrote this, and should have spent more time explaining it instead of tacking it on here in the comments. The great thing about discussions, and the reason they are important in school, is that we can check for understanding and ask for clarification so that each of us can finally make the necessary connections.
This topic is probably worth exploring further. Thank you for highlighting it.
I’m continuing this conversation on my blog. Doing some (seriously required) catching up in my bloglines, I came across this post at “Are we doing anything today?” which seemed relevant.
The teaching of reading and the “phonics war” is touched on in Gatto’s history of (compulsory) education. As someone who knows nothing about this war, and who learned to read by sounding out (I guess that phonics?) as taught by my Mum before I started school at the tender age of 5, I’d be interested to hear your comments on what he writes, if you ever get around to it. Altho beating around on your bike and letting your mind quieten (I wanted to write “stillen” but that’s probably German…) and taking mind-altering and thought-provoking photos is more important.
Regarding the relevant post“…and it’s culturally disconnected from anything they know…” refers to cultural bias, which is a fundamental problem with standardized testing. The test-makers believe they eliminate bias when they pass the test through a series of screens (a committe, really), but if we open our imaginations enough to admit that culture is more than broad ethnic categories or social groups, we see that no test can be bias-free. Even simple communication, face-to-face, is prone to the problem – as you pointed out in your excellent example with the church fire.
As to Gatto, I began reading him the other night. Didn’t see the Reading Wars stuff. It’s a volatile issue, and if you want to have some fun with it I think all you have to do is write a blog post about it and wait for the comments to roll in. I’m going to hold off on saying anything about that subject for now. If you search Borderland for the term, you can
see what happened.
I look forward to following your schema meanders. I like the word, stillen.
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