THE IMPORTANCE OF PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

Building Children's Background Knowledge and Thinking Skills

Source: Excerpted from Teaching Our Youngest: A Guide for Preschool Teachers & Child Care & Family Providers, U.S. Department of Education.

The more children know about their world, the easier it is for them to read and learn when they get to school. You have an important role to play in helping children learn new information, ideas, and vocabulary and how to use this knowledge to become full participants in their own learning. You can help children to connect new information and ideas to what they already know and understand.

Young children need to be able to:

Know about what things are and how they work.
Learn information about the world around them.
Extend their use of language and develop vocabulary.
Develop the ability to figure things out and to solve problems.

Here are some things that you can do to help children build knowledge:

Provide them with opportunities to develop concepts by exploring and working with familiar classroom equipment and materials in a variety of ways. - Children learn about substances and changes in substances by cooking. - Children learn about plants by planting seeds and taking care of the growing plants. - Children learn about social situations and interactions through real interactions and dramatic play.

Share informational books. Children enjoy learning about their world. They enjoy looking at books about things of interest to them—perhaps how plants grow, how baby animals develop, or how vehicles carry people and things. Fortunately, many wonderful informational books are available today—books with spectacular photographs, illustrations, and descriptions that children can understand easily.

Teach the children new words and concepts. Explain new vocabulary in the books that you read with them. Teach them by naming all of the things in the classroom. In everyday talk with children, introduce words and concepts that they may not know, for example, beauty or fairness.

Have children write, draw, build, and engage in dramatic play. These experiences will help children to incorporate what they are learning with what they already know.

Take the children on field trips. Any time children go some place, especially some place new to them, they can learn something. Even if it is just a walk around the block, children can learn something new if you talk with them. Point out things they might not notice. Explain events that are taking place. Answer the questions children have and praise them for looking and learning. Before you go to a place the children have never been, such as a zoo or a museum, discuss what they will be seeing and learning. After the trip, have the children talk about their experiences.

Provide a variety of materials for your children to explore. For example, wire, cardboard, water, tubes, tissue paper, and funnels.

Invite visitors to your classroom. Classroom visitors can teach your children a great deal. They can bring interesting objects or animals to talk about with the children. Visitors can talk about their jobs or their hobbies or show pictures of faraway places they have seen or tell stories about life long ago.

These are some ideas that Teachers can use to peek the interest of students in their class. By stimulating them they can generate discussions which would eventually lead to reading.

Facts About Reading Aloud

Source: Family Reading. NCES Fast Facts. National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education.

Reading to young children promotes language acquisition and literacy development and, later on, achievement in reading comprehension and overall success in school. The percentage of young children read aloud to daily by a family member is one indicator of how well young children are prepared for school.

My name is Venessa Sooknanan Mohammed. I am a Masters in Education Reading student at the University of the West Indies. This Blog was set up as part of the requirement for a course that is being done this semester - ICT for Reading.

I am the Head of the Science Department at Williamsville Secondary School and I teach Agricultural Science. This school was deshifted and converted in 2006 and over the past two years we had the task of preparing students for CSEC.

The change from the Junior Secondary culture and the shift system presented various challenges. Among these were the teaching of Special students and main stream students who were not ready for that level of work. This challenge prompted me to get training in literacy. As a result I did the Certificate in the Teaching of Reading. This course enabled me to incorporate reading in the content area and implement strategies that will assist students to read.

The desire to help these struggling readers motivated me to do remedial work with them. The Masters programme that I am presently pursuing is able to help me assess, diagnose to some extent and plan instruction that can incoperate all aspects of learning to help struggling readers.