Build Knowledge Through Research Reading comprehension is strongly determined by the knowledge and vocabulary we already have (Bransford et al., 2000; Cervetti & Wright, 2020; Oakhill et al., 2015). Consider two books written at the same Lexile level–one about teaching and the other about quantum physics. Which would you comprehend better? Most likely the book on teaching. It’s because you bring far more background knowledge to the text and are more confident in your abilities to understand it. We don’t need to know everything an author assumes, but if we’re missing too much, our comprehension plummets (O’Reilly et al., 2019). Knowledge is critical. Knowledge helps us make necessary inferences (Oakhill et al., 2015; Willingham, 2006). It helps us men- tally organize content so we can more clearly grasp the central ideas (Willingham, 2017; Cervetti & Hiebert, 2018). Knowledge also helps us to read more quickly, accelerating the rate at which we can learn new content, and it leads to less rereading (Willingham, 2006). However, the new science of learning research shows that not all knowledge is usable. Knowledge sticks best when it is organized around important concepts and is connected to something we already know (Bransford et al., 2000; Willingham, 2006). The more we know about a topic, the more readily we can learn new things related to it–that’s because when we have substantial prior knowledge, there are more places for new knowledge to “stick” (Brod et al., 2016). This creates a kind of “snowball effect,” where the students who learn the most about a given topic are the ones who already know the most about it (Beier & Ackerman, 2005; Willingham, 2006). In other words, to boost student knowledge most effectively, we must connect to their prior knowledge, and we must stick with topics for enough time that every student can get the “snowball effect” rolling. Topical text sets are especially important for helping students to build knowledge, since “reading in [them] increases the likeli- hood that students will encounter the same words and concepts, facilitating their ease of reading and building their knowledge” (Cervetti and Hiebert, 2014). One way to approach this is by using a quad text framework, creating text sets that include a mul- timodal text to help students build knowledge visually, an easier informational text, a hook text that helps to build interest and activate motivation, and a challenging target text that will allow students to apply their growing content knowledge (Lupo et al., 2017). While students’ text sets need not be limited to four texts, applying this framework can be helpful, allowing kids to read increasingly complex texts while building knowledge and simultaneously encouraging a sense of purpose and self-efficacy. Orient to Texts Your students enter this unit with extensive experience orienting themselves to texts. Across second grade, and across Unit 1 of third grade, students learned to take a sneak peek of their books, studying the title, the back blurb, the title of contents, and sifting through the pictures, thinking, “What will this book teach?” As students orient themselves to a text even before they start reading it, they begin the all-important work of self monitoring. In a meta-analysis of 19 studies, researchers found that thinking about thinking and actively adjusting one’s goals and thoughts has a positive effect on reading (Guzman et al., 2018). In order for students to efficiently add the new information they are learning to their existing mental files and develop self-ef- ficacy and a sense of purpose, it’s helpful if they are able to anticipate what the text will teach. Students learn to ask not just, “What is this text about?” but also “What do I already know about that topic?” This process of activating prior knowledge while orienting to the text serves to deepen students’ reading comprehension (Pressley & Allington, 2014; Hattan & Alexander, 2020; Kostons & van der Werf, 2015), and it is one of the strategic six reading comprehension strategies recommended by Cunninghman, Burkins, and Yates (2024). It also encourages self-awareness of a student’s personal, cultural, and linguistic assets and interests while allowing students to experience self-efficacy (CASEL, 2025). A new part of this work you’ll introduce to your third graders is that after readers ask, “What will this book teach?” they’ll also ask, “How will this book likely go?” This is important, because informational readers benefit from paying attention to structures present in texts. Noting signals for those structures can boost comprehension (Pyle et al., 2017; Boon et al., 2015; Burns et al., 2011). You’ll model this regularly during read-aloud and your minilessons. In addition, we’ve provided a series of small groups around orienting to texts.
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