A Conversation on Frontloading: Week 6

"The research literature supports one compelling fact: what students already know about the content is one of the strongest indicators of how well they will learn new information relative to the content."
                                                                                       (Marzano, 2004 in Buehl, p 17)

"Having knowledge is one thing; using it is another. That readers often do not relate what they are reading to what they already know has prompted research about how to encourage more extensive use of prior knowledge."                                                      (Pressley, 2002 in Buehl, p 16)


Prior knowledge is something we rely on all the time, but I imagine we often call it something else--
"I have a hunch, and instinct, my common sense tells me that, this reminds me of, this sounds like, I'm guessing that" and so on.  Buehl tells us that we are continuously filling up our filing cabinet, accommodating and assimilating information into its many files. And that process of filing is fluid--things come in and out, files are shuffled and integrated.

Most of our prior knowledge comes from vicarious learning experiences in the world, some from our home culture and social networks, which often influence what we read and talk about. But do we always know when we have something useful, something that is relevant to the discourse of school? Do we always know how to respond to a question like the one suggested in the transactional strategy article from some week's ago--"What are you thinking?" This is the disconnect I find so fascinating. Predictions are a good example--we make the strongest predictions when we have gathered enough information. Estimating how long it will take to get somewhere, knowing the probability of a child waking up by a certain time, predicting when the daffodils will bloom for Spring--these require previously gathered understandings. But unless they are taught explicitly, children cannot see how daily predictions made in real life are similar to the predictions required for reading in academic discourses.

Buehl stresses the importance of academic knowledge, and this knowledge is based on exposure to specific disciplinary language, i.e. vocabulary. In our discussions about struggling readers last week, I asked you to keep a critical eye on how we track and dumb down the curricular materials given to "readers in need" when they so desperately require broader exposure to the language of more challenging texts and contexts.  What Villano argues is that she can expose her students to reading these disciplinary ideas and vocabulary with trade books that have a less passive voice, and at the same time stretch her students' prior knowledge muscles with repeated exposure to different text genres. Each genre presents a different "match"--whether it is poetry, narrative fiction or an informational picture book, each book presents and opportunity to decipher the message of the author and explore both the explicit and hidden knowledge together before developing independence.

Was anyone wondering whether Villano's efforts to skirt the textbook were offering a workaround--  a way to avoid reading arguably the more challenging text?  I raise this because we know that textbooks have their strengths and purpose, and that conforming to the Common Core standards and their Lexile levels will require a jump in text challenge. What if Villano had done a "think aloud" to unpack a big word like republic? Would they have been able to understand? Perhaps, but the grammar of the textbook makes it hard for the reader to engage with the author's distant voice and question, predict, all of the comprehension processes that help us bring prior knowledge to bear on new understanding and new texts. In some ways, it is a "cold" reading by nature of its dry tone and structure, and students don't respond because they don't think anyone is talking to them!  This goes back to the disconnect between reading and speaking--trade books help close this gap.

Along with supplemental, multimodal sources like those you are choosing for your Multiple Literacy Project, Buehl suggests that students sometimes need a warmup, and those warmups come in many forms, some which we have already explored in class: visualizations, directed reading thinking activities which Villano enacts with read-alouds, anticipation guides, chapter tours, story impressions, brainstorming--the list goes on.

This Wednesday we'll have an opportunity to talk about some of these different strategies for frontloading, how we can adapt them for different readers, and when we are telling out students too much, rather than letting them do the work of making predictions and approximations of meaning. We witnessed this in the beginning of Coleen's Owl inquiry, and they were empowered by that experience.

I'll leave you with one connection and one question--try to make a mental list of some of the strategies you've seen presented or discussed that allowed for frontloading at the beginning of the learning cycle--whether it was a quick write, brainstorming activity, discussion web or process drama exercise. Would you say these were frontloading activities, or merely opportunities to recognize what children already know in order to connect that knowledge to the required disciplinary context?

We wish you luck on your projects, and a glossary will be up soon.


** SEE COLEEN'S POST FOR THE GLOSSARY THIS WEEK.