BUILDING BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE TO SUPPORT COMPREHENSION
Access to informational texts is vital for students, given that these texts are an important means of building background knowledge, which in turn facilitates the meaning-making processes of reading comprehension (Gabriel, Allington, & Billen, 2012). Background knowledge is viewed as critical for constructing a basic understanding of a text as well as for helping readers build their own mental model of the content. Scholastic Magazines+ supports the development of background knowledge through engaging, fact-based articles. Additional supports for magazine articles, such as videos containing background information on a topic, are available through the Scholastic Magazines+ digital portal. Together, basic understanding and a mental model can lead to reading with deeper understanding. This holds true for both students learning to read and more experienced readers. When exploring middle-school students’ magazine reading habits, researchers found that background and specific vocabulary knowledge were critical for students’ reading comprehension and engagement (Gabriel et al., 2012). Educators note that their classroom curriculum benefits from the rich content and engaging topics that magazines offer. Research on the habits of fourth-, seventh-, and ninth-grade teachers found that half of the teachers reported that they used magazines in teaching content subjects (Olson, Gee, & Forester, 1989). These teachers used magazines to teach students to identify authors’ diverse points of view by assigning articles with opposing viewpoints and asking students to evaluate what they read. They also used magazines as a resource to help students develop reading strategies to activate prior knowledge, predict what articles would be about, and relate the content to their own experiences. This integration of prior knowledge with new information underscores the role of background knowledge in facilitating the meaning-making processes of reading comprehension (Gabriel et al., 2012).
iStockPhoto
SCHOLASTIC MAGAZINES+ RESEARCH FOUNDATION 5
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs