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+Research behind curriculum based off of sequence/why it has what it has

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We at the Core Knowledge Foundation fervently believe that our experience over the past thirty years in championing the use of a coherent, cumulative, content-specific curriculum in schools throughout the United States can be of significant value to states and school districts looking to take the next step forward.

To that end, we offer this updated, 2023 edition of the Core Knowledge Sequence. Our original mission, Excellence and Equity for All Children, remains unchanged. The simple, yet powerful underlying premise of Core Knowledge, that knowledge builds on knowledge, still fuels our mission. Many of the changes made in this latest edition reflect new findings from cognitive research, current standards, and a concerted effort to incorporate more inclusive representation of the peoples and cultures that have shaped the world into what we know today, while still holding true to the idea there is a body of lasting knowledge and skills that form the core of a strong Preschool through Grade 8 curriculum. This includes the fundamentals of science, basic principles of government, important events in history, essential elements of mathematics, widely acknowledged masterpieces of art and music from around the world, and stories and poems passed down from generation to generation. This explicit identification of what children should learn at each grade level ensures a coherent approach to building knowledge across all grade levels, making efficient and effective use of instructional time.

The essential document for any Core Knowledge teacher or school, the 2023 Core Knowledge Sequence is intended to help children establish strong foundations of knowledge, grade by grade. It represents our best effort to identify and describe the specific core of shared knowledge that all children should learn in U.S. schools.

For grades K-8, the Sequence is organized by grade level and, within each grade, by subject. The K-8 Sequence provides a coherent, cumulative, and content-specific outline of specific knowledge and skills to be taught in language arts, history and geography (world and American), mathematics, science, visual arts, and music. You can download a high-level summary of topics in the K-8 Core Knowledge Sequence.

The Preschool Sequence provides model guidelines of fundamental competencies and specific knowledge to build coherent foundations for later learning in kindergarten and beyond. The Preschool Sequence is meant for children between the ages of three and five.

We are grateful to those who took the time to provide feedback on our draft sequence and proposed updates. Over the past thirty years, we have been able to refine and fine tune the implementation of Core Knowledge, thanks to the effort and feedback of thousands of teachers who have put the Core Knowledge Sequence into practice in real classrooms with real students. We have attempted to reflect our increased wisdom with regard to effective implementation in this 2023 edition of the Sequence.

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The Core Knowledge Sequence: Content and Skills Guidelines for PreK-8

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The Core Knowledge Sequence is a detailed outline of specific content and skills to be taught in language arts, history, science, the fine arts, and more.

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The Core Knowledge Foundation provides open access to content-rich curriculum materials for Preschool through Grade 8, including the Core Knowledge Curriculum Series™, with many materials now available and many more in development.

Terms of Use

Full versions for most of our products are available to download for FREE! The materials made available for anyone to use, adapt, and share (with attribution), but no one is permitted to sell either the original program, an adaptation of it, or lesson plans that reproduce any part of it. For more information, see the Guidelines to Core Knowledge and the Creative Commons License.

How to Download Free Curriculum

Use the drop down menus in the Filter By fields to select subject, grade, and/or language. Then click the "Apply" button.

Select the unit title or book series by clicking on the image.

Click any of the red buttons to download individual resources or entire units.

Please note: Download time may vary depending on the size of the file and internet speeds.

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The Core Knowledge Foundation provides open access to content-rich curriculum materials for Preschool through Grade 8, including the Core Knowledge Curriculum Series™, with many materials now available and many more in development. Terms of Use Full versions for most of our products are available to download for FREE!

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Not necessary for most!

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Stores the data but tools are the same as free version above on UoOregon's site

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Post-assessments

DP/AP exams

Unit/module/domain assessments

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Probe Generator

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Allard, F., and Starkes, J. L. (1991). Motor-skill experts in sports, dance, and other domains. In K. A. Ericsson and J. Smith (eds.), Toward a general theory of expertise: Prospects and limits (pp. 126-152). New York:Cambridge University Press.

Arbuckle, T. Y., Vanderleck, V. F., Harsany, M., and Lapidus, S. (1990). Adult age differences in memory in relation to availability and accessibility of knowledge-based schemas. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 16, 305-315.

Beier, M. E. and Ackerman, P. L. (2005). Age, ability and the role of prior knowledge on the acquisition of new domain knowledge: Promising results in a real-world environment. Psychology and Aging, 20, 341-355.

Britton, B. K., Stimson, M., Stennett, B., and Gülgöz, S. (1998). Learning from instructional text: Test of an individual differences model. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 476-491.

Burns, B. B. (2004). The effects of speed on skilled chess performance. Psychological Science, 15, 442-447.

Chase, W. G., and Simon, H. A. (1973). Perception in chess. Cognitive Psychology, 4, 55-81.

Chi, M. T. H, Feltovich, P. and Glaser, R. (1981). Categorization and representation of physics problems by experts and novices. Cognitive Science, 5, 121-152.

Egan, D. E., and Schwartz, B. J. (1979). Chunking in recall of symbolic drawings. Memory & Cognition, 7, 149-158.

Engle, R. W., and Bukstel, L. (1978). Memory processes among bridge players of differing expertise. American Journal of Psychology, 91, 673-689.

Gilhooly, K. J., Wood, M., Kinnear, P. R., and Green, C. (1988). Skill in map reading and memory for maps. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Experimental Psychology, 40, 87-107.

Gobet, F. and Simon, H.A. (2000). Five seconds or sixty? Presentation time in expert memory. Cognitive Science, 24, 651-682.

Hall, V. C. and Edmondson, B. (1992). Relative importance of aptitude and prior domain knowledge on immediate and delayed post-tests. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84, 219-223.

Hambrick, D. Z. (2003). Why are some people more knowledgeable than others? A longitudinal study of knowledge acquisition. Memory & Cognition, 31, 902-917.

Hambrick, D. Z. and Engle, R. W. (2002). Effects of domain knowledge, working memory capacity, and age on cognitive performance: An investigation of the knowledge-is-power hypothesis. Cognitive Psychology, 44, 339-387.

Hambrick, D. Z. and Oswald, F. L. (2005). Does domain knowledge moderate involvement of working memory capacity in higher-level cognition? A test of three models. Journal of Memory and Language, 52, 377-397.

Kaakinen, J. K. Hyönä, J. and Keenan, J. M. (2003). How prior knowledge, WMC, and relevance of information affect eye fixations in expository text. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29, 447-457.

Kosmoski, G. J., Gay, G., and Vockell, E. L. (1990). Cultural Literacy and Academic Achievement. Journal of Experimental Education, 58, 4, p. 265-272, Summer.

McKeithen, K. B., Reitman, J. S., Rueter, H. H., and Hirtle, S. C. (1981). Knowledge organization and skill differences in computer programmers. Cognitive Psychology, 13, 307-325.

Morrow, D. G., Leirer, V. O., and Altieri, P. A. (1992). Aging, expertise, and narrative processing. Psychology and Aging, 7, 376-388.

Recht, D. R. and Leslie, L. (1988). Effect of prior knowledge on good and poor readers' memory of text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 16-20.

Schneider, W., Bjorklund, D. F. and Maier-Brückner, W. (1996). The effects of expertise and IQ on children's memory: When knowledge is, and when it is not enough. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 19, 773-796.

Schneider, W., Korkel, J., and Weinert, F. E. (1989). Domain-specific knowledge and memory performance: A comparison of high- and low-aptitude children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 81, 306-312.

Sloboda, J. (1976). Visual perception of musical notation: Registering pitch symbols in memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 28, 1-16.

Spilich, G. J., Vesonder, G. T, Chiesi, H. L., and Voss, J. F. (1979). Text processing of domain-related information for individuals with high- and low-domain knowledge. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 18, 275-290.

Taconis, R., Ferguson-Hessler, M. G. M., and Broekkamp, H. (2001). Teaching science problem solving: An overview of experimental work. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 38, 442-468.

Van Overschelde, J. P. and Healy, A. F. (2001). Learning of nondomain facts in high- and low-knowledge domains. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27, 1160-1171.

Walker, C. H. (1988). Relative importance of domain knowledge and overall aptitude on acquisition of domain-related information. Cognition and Instruction, 4, 25-42.

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Knowledge does much more than just help students hone their thinking skills: It actually makes learning easier. Knowledge is not only cumulative, it grows exponentially. Those with a rich base of factual knowledge find it easier to learn more - the rich get richer.

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Natalie Wexler, education journalist and author of "The Knowledge Gap," hosts the inaugural series of our new podcast, Reading Comprehension Revisited.

In six short (~30-minute) episodes, Natalie tackles crucial questions such as, why do students from low-income backgrounds typically score lower on reading tests? Why do improvements in the early grades fade out as students advance to higher levels? And most significantly, why haven't substantial investments in education reform delivered expected results?

The answer lies in a longstanding misunderstanding about reading comprehension itself, and how students learn to make meaning from texts. Over six episodes, you'll learn what research tells us about how children really learn to read, and you'll hear from educators from around the country as they share their experiences of embedding knowledge-building into their literacy instruction, and the powerful effects this change has had on their students.
Episode 1: "Kids were bored to death"
June 28, 2023 - Despite substantial investments in education reform, the US remains in the grip of a decades-long reading crisis. But why? With the help of teachers and researchers, host Natalie Wexler introduces the urgent need to revisit our approach to reading comprehension.
Episode 2: "A simple way of looking at a complex problem"
June 28, 2023 - Thanks to tireless efforts by researchers, advocates, and educators, the importance of systematically teaching decoding is finally being recognized. But, as you'll hear, there's far more to reading than decoding, and more we need to do to help our kids become truly literate.
Episode 3: "That cloud looks like an anvil"
July 5, 2023 - Abby Boruff, Deloris Fowler, and Kyair Butts teach different ages and subjects, in different parts of the country. When their schools adopted knowledge-building curricula they were skeptical, but the dramatic results they saw in their classrooms helped change their minds.
Episode 4: "Now they had something to write about"
July 12, 2023 - It's hard to read about a topic you don't have knowledge about, but it's virtually impossible to write about it. By having students write about content they're learning about, knowledge-building curricula boost both writing ability and learning in general.
Episode 5: "Everything was in silos"
July 19, 2023 - To become fully literate, many students need a curriculum that builds knowledge in a logical, coherent way across grade levels, and only a leader can put that kind of system in place. Meet Brent Conway and Dr. LaTonya Goffney, two leaders who did exactly that.
Episode 6: "Think what a better society we'll have"
July 26, 2023 - American education has a number of serious problems - and our failure to start building kids' knowledge early is a fundamental one. But there are ways to ensure that the growing trend toward knowledge-building curriculum takes root and spreads.

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Natalie Wexler, education journalist and author of "The Knowledge Gap," hosts the inaugural series of our new podcast, Reading Comprehension Revisited. In six short (~30-minute) episodes, Natalie tackles crucial questions such as, why do students from low-income backgrounds typically score lower on reading tests?

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Amplify Caminos is an authentic elementary Spanish language arts program. Like its English language partner, Amplify CKLA, Amplify Caminos provides explicit, systematic foundational skills instruction sequenced with deep knowledge-building content to foster comprehension. When used with Amplify CKLA, Amplify Caminos provides full parity across English and Spanish that's suitable for any dual language implementation model.

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It was only after years within the education reform movement that Natalie Wexler stumbled across a hidden explanation for our country's frustrating lack of progress when it comes to providing every child with a quality education. The problem wasn't one of the usual scapegoats: lazy teachers, shoddy facilities, lack of accountability. It was something no one was talking about: the elementary school curriculum's intense focus on decontextualized reading comprehension "skills" at the expense of actual knowledge. In the tradition of Dale Russakoff's The Prize and Dana Goldstein's The Teacher Wars, Wexler brings together history, research, and compelling characters to pull back the curtain on this fundamental flaw in our education system--one that fellow reformers, journalists, and policymakers have long overlooked, and of which the general public, including many parents, remains unaware.

But The Knowledge Gap isn't just a story of what schools have gotten so wrong--it also follows innovative educators who are in the process of shedding their deeply ingrained habits, and describes the rewards that have come along: students who are not only excited to learn but are also acquiring the knowledge and vocabulary that will enable them to succeed. If we truly want to fix our education system and unlock the potential of our neediest children, we have no choice but to pay attention.

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The untold story of the root cause of America's education crisis--and the seemingly endless cycle of multigenerational poverty.It was only after years within the education reform movement that Natalie Wexler stumbled across a hidden explanation for our country's frustrating lack of progress when it comes to providing every child with a quality education.

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News from AIM Institute for Learning & Research

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Read about the Science of Reading and our work at AIM Institute.

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Research tells us that the following ingredients are crucial in students’ ability and intrinsic desire to read well:

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Research tells us that the following ingredients are crucial in students’ ability and intrinsic desire to read well:

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Coherently building knowledge of words and the world.

Teaching students to read through systematic foundational skills instruction until word recognition is automatic and students are fully fluent.

Affording every student access to focused, close communal reading of content-rich complex texts.

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Knowledge-Building Literacy Overview for SAMPLE SCHOOL

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Know Better, Do Better: Comprehension | The Scholastic Teacher Store

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In this timely book, the Libens explore what kids truly need to comprehend texts. Focusing on vocabulary, knowledge building, and language structures, they offer ideas to put into action now.

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The Reading Comprehension Blueprint Helping Students Make Meaning from Text Excerpt

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Read this excerpt from The Reading Comprehension Blueprint Helping Students Make Meaning from Text to get a preview of Chapter One.

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Download the latest edition of the CUBED For Free! The paper/pencil version of the CUBED has always been, and continues to be, FREE to download...

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Manual/Scoring (read first)
Printable booklets/student materials

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See their needs. Close the gaps. Help them grow.

Better insights, better decisions, better outcomes

MAP Growth, part of the Growth Activation Solution from NWEA, is the most trusted and innovative assessment for measuring achievement and growth in K-12 math, reading, language usage, and science. It provides teachers with accurate, actionable evidence to help inform instructional strategies regardless of how far students are above or below grade level. It also connects to the largest set of instructional content providers, giving educators flexibility in curriculum choices.

Useful reports for data-informed decisions

Easy-to-use, standards-aligned reports put the information teachers need at their fingertips. Reliable insights make it simple for teachers to find common areas of need among their students, identify students who could benefit from intervention, and determine which instructional strategies are generating the most academic growth. Higher-level reports provide administrators with the context to drive improvement across entire schools and educational systems.

When students are counting on you, count on MAP Growth

Using MAP Growth as part of a comprehensive and balanced assessment plan, teachers can confidently tailor instruction to challenge every student, whether they are below, at, or above grade level. MAP Growth student reports also present realistic learning goals by subject areas so that, through a teacher's guidance, students can individually see their progress and be inspired to take charge of their own learning.

MAP Growth: The center of the Growth Activation Solution

The Growth Activation Solution pairs MAP Growth with guided implementation and professional learning experiences that engage and galvanize your team while honing assessment literacy and instructional planning. Wrap-around support and expert-led guidance round out this solution, providing your teachers and coaches with the resources and tools they need to improve student outcomes.

Discover the MAP Growth difference

Through intuitive design, unrivaled innovation, and a focus on accessibility, MAP Growth helps you understand the needs of more students than ever before.

Incredible coverage

Available in more grades and subjects than any other interim assessment, including science and high school-level, course-specific math

MAP en español

Spanish options to assess math and reading in students' home language

Right length and no longer

A powerful assessment right-sized to pinpoint where your students are in their learning, in only as many questions as necessary

Using our MAP [Growth] data, the learning continuum, and formative assessment practices, our students are experiencing great growth, closing the achievement gap!

Dr. Lori Stollar
Director of Curriculum & Innovation, Littlestown Area School District, PA

Explore connected teaching and learning

MAP Growth scores can now place students in personalized adaptive practice or intensive intervention.

Foster growth with connected curriculum

MAP® Accelerator™, co-developed by NWEA and Khan Academy, translates MAP Growth results to personalized learning pathways with standards-aligned math content to meet each student where they are.

Foster growth with connected curriculum

Maximize the tools you're already using. MAP Growth data connects with the most instructional partners of any assessment to ensure engaging, standards-aligned content that supports diverse student populations.

In a class of our own

Ready to close the gaps and make gains?

Helping educators see student needs and close learning gaps

Explore grades, subjects, languages and accommodations supported in MAP Growth.

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Precisely measure student growth and performance with MAP Growth

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MAP Growth is the most trusted and innovative assessment for measuring achievement and growth in K-12 math, reading, language usage, and science.

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UFLI Foundations: Progress Monitoring and Differentiation

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Ep. 139: Knowledge and Comprehension with Daniel Willingham and Barbara Davidson

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Listen to this episode from Melissa & Lori Love Literacy ™ on Spotify. In today's episode, we discuss knowledge and vocabulary as critical components of reading comprehension. We hear from author and professor Daniel Willingham, who shares research on the important role knowledge plays in comprehension.

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In Why Knowledge Matters, E. D. Hirsch, Jr., presents evidence from cognitive science, sociology, and education history to further the argument for a knowledge-based elementary curriculum.
Influential scholar Hirsch, author of The Knowledge Deficit, asserts that a carefully planned curriculum that imparts communal knowledge is essential in achieving one of the most fundamental aims and objectives of education: preparing students for lifelong success. Hirsch examines historical and contemporary evidence from the United States and other nations, including France, and affirms that a knowledge-based approach has improved both achievement and equity in schools where it has been instituted.

In contrast, educational change of the past several decades in the United States has endorsed a skills-based approach, founded on, Hirsch points out, many incorrect assumptions about child development and how children learn. He recommends new policies that are better aligned with our current understanding of neuroscience, developmental psychology, and social science.

The book focuses on six persistent problems that merit the attention of contemporary education reform: the over-testing of students in the name of educational accountability; the scapegoating of teachers; the fadeout of preschool gains; the narrowing of the curriculum to crowd out history, geography, science, literature, and the arts; the achievement gap between demographic groups; and the reliance on standards, such as the Common Core State Standards, that are not linked to a rigorous curriculum.

Why Knowledge Matters makes a clear case for educational innovation and introduces a new generation of American educators to Hirsch's astute and passionate analysis.

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In Why Knowledge Matters, E. D. Hirsch, Jr., presents evidence from cognitive science, sociology, and education history to further the argument for a knowledge-based elementary curriculum.Influential scholar Hirsch, author of The Knowledge Deficit, asserts that a carefully planned curriculum that imparts communal knowledge is essential in achieving one of the most fundamental aims and objectives of education: preparing students for lifelong success.

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Daniel Willingham Talks Reading and the Mind

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A Guide for Evaluating K-8 ELA Curriculum

Designed by literacy experts for evaluating K-8 ELA curriculum, the Knowledge Matters Review Tool is a resource to determine if an ELA curriculum is truly "content-rich" and aligned to research on reading comprehension.

About the Knowledge Matters Review Tool

We've developed the Knowledge Matters Review Tool to help educators understand how key research insights and practices should be translated into curriculum design for K-8 ELA. It is intended for use by states, districts, and schools when evaluating ELA curriculum.

The Review Tool is designed to be used in addition to, not instead of, other instruments to ensure that "knowledge building," and by extension reading comprehension, is appropriately addressed.

Our team of experts has identified 26 separate criteria across eight dimensions of high-quality, content-rich ELA curriculum. The more evidence these criteria are present in a curriculum, the better.

Access the review tool

We offer a PDF version for downloading as well as a Google Doc version that can be used when collaborating with colleagues. Both versions can be edited and adapted as needed.

VIEW GOOGLE DOC DOWNLOAD PDF

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Knowledge Matters Review Tool - Knowledge Matters Campaign

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Designed by literacy experts for evaluating K-8 ELA curriculum, the Knowledge Matters Review Tool is a resource to determine if an ELA curriculum is truly "content-rich" and aligned to research on reading comprehension. We've developed the Knowledge Matters Review Tool to help educators understand how key research insights and practices should be translated into curriculum design for K-8 ELA.

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Consider:

listening and responding verbally or in writing (lang comp)

reading and responding verbally or in writing (reading comp)

(before and) AFTER a unit's learning--this will control for background knowledge and vocabulary's influence on other aspects of comprehension

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On a scale of 1-10, how good are you at comprehending what people say to you?

It's a bit of a silly question, isn't it? Whether or not we comprehend what we are told is dependent on our grasp of the individual words being used, the concepts to which they relate and how these interact to convey meaning. Talk to me about the first nine seasons of The Simpsons using familiar words and I'll comprehend pretty well. Talk to me about your favourite "anguilliform" Pokemon character and I'll probably stare at you blankly. Yes, there are some basic capacities that underpin our ability to understand what people say aloud, such as our hearing and our working memory capacity. But - on the assumption that these things aren't an impediment - our ability to comprehend what we are told is dependent on what we know about the subject at hand and the words being used to describe it. In other words, there is no generic listening comprehension ability. There is instead a vast network of understanding that determines the extent to which we can construct meaning from the words we hear. Trying to determine - or, heaven forbid, quantify - a person's ability to comprehend what they are told would rely on some way of measuring their grasp of all there is to know about the world and the language used to describe it. How do you measure a person's entire understanding of their world and their language? How do you effectively sample a domain this extensive? Answer: you can't.

And this brings me on to reading comprehension. Our ability to comprehend what we read is reliant on much the same network of understanding that is required for listening comprehension. Let's assume that we can recognise the words on a page fluently enough to free up the cognitive resources necessary for comprehension. Under these circumstances, whether or not we comprehend what we read is dependent on our grasp of the individual words being used, the concepts to which they relate and how these interact to convey meaning. Just as with listening comprehension, this is a domain so vast as to rule out valid assessment. To be clear, what I'm suggesting is that - beyond the development of relatively fluent word recognition* - our ability to comprehend what we read is based on everything we know about our world and our language, alongside an additional layer of knowledge related to written text conventions (e.g. punctuation, sub-headings, italics, etc). How do you measure a person's entire understanding of their world, their language and the conventions of written texts? Answer: you can't.

So, we've established that trying to measure reading comprehension is a non-starter.** From this, we can assume that the results from reading comprehension assessments need to be interpreted very cautiously, especially on the level of the individual pupil.

And this is where this blogpost would end if reading comprehension assessment hadn't warped the teaching of reading. But it has. A lot. For the sake of assessment, teachers have been incentivised to see reading comprehension as a generic skill, or, more precisely, a small set of generic skills. If this perspective were a canvas, it would look something like this:

Here is reading comprehension ability interpreted as a small collection of generic skills, things like retrieval, prediction and summarising. Reading comprehension assessments tend to divide the questions they use into a few categories such as these. Countless teachers and school leaders have thus made the understandable leap that teaching reading comprehension is the process of building up each of these generic comprehension skills. They attempt to add another broad-brushstroke layer to a pupil's prediction skill as a means of filling up the canvas. This conveniently allows for the creation of medium-term plans that state that a given class is working on prediction or inference or some other generic skill. It also allows schools to make lists related to those skills that can be ticked off as children develop. If we're going to gather evidence of a pupil's reading comprehension development, then what we presumably need is a small set of statements that correspond to a relatively small set of generic skills. This interpretation of reading comprehension achieves that.

The problem, of course, is that this interpretation is completely bogus. It is based on a view of reading comprehension that is palpably false. Yes, when we comprehend what we read, we tend to be able to retrieve information, to make predictions, to summarise what we have read, etc, and doing this stuff while we read is a useful set of habits that keeps us awake to what we are doing.*** But this is an unhelpful way to visualise our ability to comprehend what we read. I'd argue that this is better:

Forget for a moment the exact scene being portrayed, and consider the means of portraying it. Here reading comprehension ability is interpreted as a vast interacting network of understanding. It is not built up through broad brushstrokes, but through the painstaking accumulation of knowledge about words, texts and the wider world to which they relate. The natural consequence of such an interpretation is that the teaching of reading comprehension must prioritise the guided exploration of text, involving lots of reading and lots of rich discussion. Retrieval, prediction, summarising, etc will naturally form a part of this, but developing these habits is not the central goal of reading comprehension lessons. The central goal of reading comprehension lessons is to understand the specific text being read and the world to which it relates through exploration of the text's use of language. Everything else is secondary.

However, this interpretation leaves us with some problems. I've lost count of the number of school leaders and teachers who - despite their instinctive enthusiasm for this content-focused conception of reading comprehension - have asked the same two questions:

1. "How would we evidence this?"

2. "What would this look like in terms of our long-term planning?"

I will address these two questions in turn:

The answer to (1) is simple: Don't bother.

I'm serious. Just don't bother. Ofsted have made it abundantly clear that they don't want teachers gathering evidence for its own sake. If your method of assessment requires you to pretend that reading comprehension is something that it clearly is not, then it's time to dump that method of assessment. Think instead about how fluently your children read and how much they know about the English language and the wider world. The former can be assessed by hearing children read aloud and by undertaking quick fluency assessments; the latter, however, is not accessible via reference to simple rubrics. Standardised reading assessments may give a very rough idea, but they are not to be relied upon as precise measures of individual progress for all the reasons explained above. It's time to accept that there are some things that we can measure and other things that we cannot and to change our assessment decisions accordingly.

The answer to (2) is a little more difficult. Think back to the canvas above. To build up a picture like that, many thousands of dots are added across the breadth of the canvas, each chosen partly based on its relationship to the other dots on the canvas. In a content-focused view of teaching reading comprehension, our planning must focus on the content being read - the characters, the themes, the text features, the aspects of the world being described, etc. And it must do so in relation to the rest of that which has been, and will be, added to the canvas. In short, stop focusing on how non-existent generic comprehension skills will be taught. Instead focus on the texts themselves - not least their variety and their relationship to the rest of the curriculum**** - and on how you will ensure that pupils learn lots about them.

A content-focused approach to the teaching of reading comprehension aligns with a more accurate view of reading comprehension. It allows teachers to do away with pointless, time-consuming forms of assessment. It encourages school leaders to re-imagine their reading curriculum primarily in terms of the texts to be shared. Most of all, it offers our pupils a more authentic, enriching and effective experience of reading.

So, what's stopping us from teaching reading comprehension really well? Absolutely nothing.

If you'd like to find out more about teaching reading, please consider my book, The Art and Science of Teaching Primary Reading: link

All royalties will be going to the Malaria Consortium, a Give-Well-recommended charity.

* Fluent word recognition is also dependent on our broader language comprehension alongside our knowledge of phoneme-grapheme relationships, phonemic skills, etc.

** The Teachwell blog has an excellent series on this idea: http://www.teach-well.com/reforming-the-key-stage-2-reading-sat-why-its-needed-and-possible/

*** There is lots of research into comprehension strategies. This blog is a good place to start if you want to know more: https://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/comprehension-skills-or-strategies-is-there-a-difference-and-does-it-matter#sthash.ZC5WlzWX.dpbs

**** This does not mean that every text has to directly relate to something else in your wider curriculum. It might even be the case that texts are chosen precisely because of how they supplement the curriculum. (E.g. If a primary history curriculum doesn't include a study of a South American civilisation, a non-fiction text relating to the Maya civilisation might be an apt choice to add breadth to the pupils' understanding of the challenging - and often controversial - concept of civilisation.)

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What's stopping us from teaching reading comprehension really well?

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On a scale of 1-10, how good are you at comprehending what people say to you? It's a bit of a silly question, isn't it? Whether or not we comprehend what we are told is dependent on our grasp of the individual words being used, the concepts to which they relate and how these interact...

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Content-based comprehension with connections to multilingual learners

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Content-based comprehension with connections to multilingual learners

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Episode 9: Knowledge building can’t wait, with HyeJin Hwang

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Listen as HyeJin Hwang offers insights into her research on reading comprehension and content learning for students, especially among multilingual learners.

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Beyond The Knowledge Gap w/ Natalie Wexler

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Beyond The Knowledge Gap w/ Natalie Wexler

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Skip to 6:20 to get past opening and bio of Wexler

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The Knowledge Gap—K–5 Reading Curriculum and CKLA | Amplify

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Testing Manual/Test Directions (should read first!)
Printable Texting Booklets/Student Materials

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5.4K views · 63 reactions | Effective Assessments for Reading, Dr. Matt Burns | The Reading League FL

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Effective Assessments for Reading, Dr. Matt Burns

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It's AND/BOTH when it comes to Knowledge+Strategies

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It's AND/BOTH when it comes to Knowledge+Strategies

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"Scientific research evidence doesn’t say don’t teach comprehension skills and strategies explicitly; it says don’t only teach comprehension skills and strategies explicitly."

My favorite quote:
“[K]nowledge & skills are a false dichotomy. Ingredients and cakes are also a false dichotomy! You can’t be pro-cake and anti-ingredient!! If we accept that knowledge and skills are a false dichotomy, then we should also accept that knowledge and skills are NOT on a pendulum. The pendulum is the wrong metaphor. The right metaphor is a pathway, a ladder or a journey.”

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As greater consensus has been reached about how to teach children to decode and read words fluently, the focus of discussion among practitioners and researchers has shifted to reading comprehension. Some of this discussion has centred on the utility of teaching comprehension skills and strategies explicitly as awareness of the central role of background knowledge in reading comprehension has grown ( Smith et al., 2021). The arguments against teaching comprehension skills and strategies are often framed in these ways:

Comprehension skills/strategies are not generic, transferable competencies ... so it is a waste of time to teach them explicitly;

Reading comprehension is highly dependent on background knowledge ... so an evidence-based approach to reading comprehension is to always embed instruction in a knowledge-building context.

These two statements are only partly true. Comprehension skills and strategies are not generic; they are used differently by the reader depending on the text and the task ( Catts & Kamhi, 2014). However, they are transferable to the extent that students need to know how to use them appropriately for different purposes. The Scientific Advisory Committee for the Knowledge Matters Campaign (2023) describes these processes as "strategies for sense-making" (para. 14). Research on classroom instruction has shown that it is a waste of time to over-teach skills and strategies (otherwise known as a dosage effect - more is not always better), but not a waste of time to teach them explicitly to beginning and struggling readers at all. And, while reading comprehension is highly dependent on knowledge of the topic of the text, for beginning readers there is so far limited but promising evidence that embedded or integrated comprehension instruction is effective.

Scientific research evidence doesn't say don't teach comprehension skills and strategies explicitly; it says don't only teach comprehension skills and strategies explicitly.

Some authors differentiate between comprehension skills and comprehension strategies rather than considering them as a single set of cognitive or 'procedural' processes as Grissmer et al., (2023) do. However, different authors categorise them in different ways. Such (2021) says that 'explaining the main idea', 'summarising', 'making inferences', and 'making predictions' are skills, whereas 'comprehension monitoring' (which can include summarising parts of the text) is a strategy. 'Knowledge of text structures', 'vocabulary', and 'background knowledge' don't fit into either of Such's categories. Smith et al. (2021) add 'finding literal information' and 'drawing conclusions' to comprehension skills, and put 'summarising' in the strategy category along with 're-reading', 'self-questioning' and 'visualising'. Shanahan (2018) adds 'recognising supporting details', 'comparing and contrasting', 'evaluating critically', 'vocabulary', and 'sequencing events' to comprehension skills, and expands the strategies list to include 'text structure' and 'making connections to prior knowledge'. Swain (2023) suggests teaching three comprehension strategies - 'monitoring', 'prediction' and 'summarising' - and makes the salient point that 'finding the main idea' and 'summarising' are essentially the same thing.

All of these authors agree, however, that comprehension strategy instruction is useful (to a point) but comprehension skill instruction is not. Their rule of thumb is that skills are just ways that students demonstrate comprehension and can't be taught, whereas strategies are meta-cognitive activities that facilitate comprehension and can be taught. While this sounds neat, the interconnected nature of the components of reading comprehension defies making clear distinctions between them, hence the differences in opinion about which is which.

Making inferences is an example of a skill that can be developed through teaching strategies. Deriving inferred meaning from text - going beyond the literal text - is an essential aspect of reading comprehension ( Tunmer & Hoover, 2019). Making inferences is a non-generic skill that depends on other factors such as understanding of syntax, anaphoric connectives (e.g., pronoun referents) and background knowledge, as well as memory, and is therefore a product of these elements rather than a single skill that can be taught and applied to any text. However, it is also true that almost all texts require some level of inference, and that not all students know what an inference is, or when they need to make inferences to understand a text. So, although the types of inferences students make, and the information they draw on to make them will depend on the text and the task, there is still something called an 'inference'. Strategies like comprehension monitoring and knowledge of text types can help students to develop their ability to make inferences. There may not be one type of inference, or a singular way to teach it, and there may be no utility in doing weeks of repetitive 'inference' questions, but the concept of inferencing, and how to apply it, can and should be taught ( Catts, 2021/22). Interventions aimed at improving inference making by helping students to know when and how to utilise their background knowledge and vocabulary, and to make connections, have been shown to be effective at improving inferences and have also improved reading comprehension (see Oakhill et al., 2014).

Much criticism of teaching comprehension skills and strategies has arisen because there are extreme versions of instruction in which the skill or strategy itself is viewed as the final product and therefore is the focus. This is the wrong way around. Comprehension skills and strategies are part of the process and not the product. In an evidence-based approach to comprehension instruction, skills and strategies are taught explicitly and cumulatively, and gradually integrated ( Oakhill et al., 2014, 2023). The objective of teaching comprehension strategies explicitly is to make them metacognitively transparent and understandable to children so they can apply them in their reading, and then go on to use them implicitly.

Phonics instruction provides an analogy. Some children work out the alphabetic code and don't need a lot of systematic explicit phonics instruction. Others work it out over time with minimal guidance, albeit more slowly than with explicit instruction. But a significant proportion will not learn to decode without explicit instruction. Since we don't know in advance which children will be in which category, the most efficient course of action is to teach all children explicitly rather than take a wait-to-fail approach. Teaching the alphabetic code in a transparent and explicit way for a limited time at the right time gives students insight into written language that they then go on to use automatically and mostly unconsciously.

Likewise, some children will move fluidly from decoding to comprehension. However, for other children this is not a given. Comprehension involves the construction of a mental model of a text. This requires knowledge (background knowledge, vocabulary, text structures), as well as skills (retrieving and connecting background knowledge and vocabulary, making inferences, understanding grammar and syntax) and strategies (comprehension monitoring). Not all children know how to do these things. And those that do know how, don't always use them.

Given that research tells us that poor comprehenders have difficulties with certain skills and strategies, and can improve them with explicit instruction (Peng et al., 2023), it makes sense to include them in Tier 1 instruction. Explicit instruction in comprehension strategies for a limited time at the right time has a strong and large experimental research base collected over several decades. Done properly, it is scientifically evidence-based practice. Petscher et al. (2020) include comprehension strategies among the set of practices that have "compelling evidence in the science of reading" for younger and older students (p. 5).

As stated by Smith et al. (2023),

"[T]here is a significant evidence base related to reading comprehension instruction in middle-to-late elementary years that states that skills that contribute to comprehension need to be explicitly taught to students and that, particularly for less advanced readers, teachers cannot rely on incidental exposure and implicit coverage of skills as methods of teaching reading." (pp. 10-11)

Teaching reading comprehension explicitly

Teaching comprehension explicitly involves systematic instruction in the sub-skills involved. Explicit and systematic instruction requires skills to be taught in a somewhat decontextualised way, at least at first. The skill being taught needs to be explained and many examples need to be provided. Students need to practise using the skill they have learned. This necessarily involves the use of text. This text can be drawn from a larger unit of study and/or can be selected specifically to demonstrate this concept and skill. Taking it from a larger unit of study is a good idea if possible, but if a relatively small amount of time is spent on explicitly teaching the strategy, the source of the text is not make or break. The strategy being taught should then subsequently be applied and integrated with other strategies in studying larger units of work (either literature or other knowledge-building content). This will allow students to develop their skills as they acquire knowledge, and vice versa.

The stage of reading development is critical. Willingham (2006/07) says that comprehension strategy instruction isn't likely to be effective before third or fourth grade - not because of available evidence that content-embedded comprehension instruction (or any other comprehension instruction) was more effective, but rather because of an assumption that students are still learning to read accurately and fluently before Grade 3 so reading comprehension strategy instruction will be beyond their abilities. Hirsch (2016) makes the same assumptions in his recommendations. However, students who have had an explicit and systematic reading instruction program in Kindergarten and Year 1 are typically reading text at a level that does allow them to focus on comprehension in Year 2, so Willingham's and Hirsch's advice should be adjusted to reflect reading ability rather than grade level.

Embedding comprehension instruction in a content-rich curriculum - what is the evidence?

The evidence showing that background knowledge is a strong contributor to comprehension (and vice versa) is strong and not contested ( Hwang et al., 2022b). And a knowledge-rich curriculum has value that exceeds its contribution to reading comprehension. Knowledge is important in its own right.

However, when it comes to reading comprehension instruction in K-2, scientific reading research does not reject explicit instruction in comprehension strategies and does not yet provide strong support for the contention that comprehension instruction must always be embedded in a knowledge-building curriculum. Yes, students in those years should have a content-rich curriculum. No question at all. But when it comes to the way that content is integrated and combined with comprehension instruction for beginning readers, the best way to do this is yet to be established.

There is mixed research evidence demonstrating embedded or integrated comprehension instruction is an effective approach for beginning readers, that is, from K to 2. It is appealing and makes sense in many ways; however, at the moment, the evidence supporting it is promising but not uniformly strong and most studies are quite recent. It is also not always clear what such instruction looks like, with resultant misunderstandings of the process.

According to Cabell and Hwang (2020), "the testing of integrated literacy and knowledge-building approaches is a growing area of inquiry, and there have been relatively few experimental studies in K-2 settings and even fewer that have tested content-rich [English Language Arts] instruction".

Cabell and Hwang (2020) describe two randomised control trials with Kindergarten students who had the Core Knowledge Curriculum. The trials resulted in large effect sizes for proximal (i.e., taught) vocabulary, science knowledge, and social studies knowledge; small effect sizes for standardised assessments of expressive vocabulary and science knowledge; and no effect for standardised receptive vocabulary, linguistic comprehension, or social studies knowledge. The study is continuing with first grade students but published results are not yet available.

Smith et al. (2021) looked at the relationship between knowledge and reading in upper-middle primary school but didn't review studies of embedded instruction. They conclude that knowledge partially compensates for reading skill deficiencies.

Hwang et al. (2022) published a meta-analysis of content-integrated reading instruction. There was a wide range of effect sizes for measures of vocabulary and comprehension, from small negative and small positive to large negative and large positive. The most positive effects were for researcher-developed, proximal assessments rather than standardised assessments, which is typical but means that they need to be interpreted carefully. Fifteen studies included students in K-2. It is not clear which if any studies involving older students were measuring the effects of instruction in K-2.

Grissmer et al. (2023) found that students attending schools that implemented a knowledge-building curriculum (Core Knowledge) from Kindergarten to Grade 6 had significantly higher literacy (combined comprehension and writing) scores in Grades 3 to 6 than students who attended schools using a variety of other undescribed methods of reading instruction. The assessment was specifically designed to measure learning of the Common Core standards. Participating students were mostly from high-to-middle income families. Students in the one low income school had even stronger results.

It is worth reading the studies of content-embedded comprehension instruction in full but the evidence can be summarised as follows. Two publications in the list below are of the Core Knowledge Curriculum, which is often described as content-embedded reading comprehension instruction; however, as described in more detail in the next section, this is not necessarily an accurate description for this curriculum in K-2.

How does the Core Knowledge Curriculum teach and develop reading comprehension?

The elementary/primary school Core Knowledge Curriculum is a set of lesson plans to be delivered sequentially in each year level from Kindergarten to Grade 6. It covers Language Arts (i.e., literacy), Mathematics, Science, History and Geography, Visual Arts, and Music ( Core Knowledge, 2023). There are teaching manuals, student reading materials and whiteboard slides for all units of work. Teaching materials are written by a variety of authors. All materials are free to download but there are substantial costs for schools associated with printing them.

The method of teaching reading and knowledge-building with the Core Knowledge Language Arts Curriculum changes from Kindergarten to Grade 6. In Kindergarten, Grade 1 and Grade 2, there are two separate, parallel instructional components - 'Reading' (print awareness, phonemic awareness, phonics, word analysis, and fluency) and 'Read-alouds'. The rationale for Read-alouds is to expose beginning readers to language and information that exceeds what they would be able to access through reading. There is little expectation that reading will be the vehicle for knowledge acquisition at this point. The texts used for Read-alouds - both fiction and non-fiction - are suggested in the Core Knowledge Sequence for that year, and teachers are encouraged to use texts focused on a single topic for a sustained period of time - about two weeks. During Read-alouds, students do not see the written text but instead are provided with pictures that illustrate aspects of the text. The Read-aloud is followed by a structured whole class discussion that encourages the literal and analytical skills that enable comprehension. These include summarising, predicting, making global and text-based connections, activating prior knowledge, and making inferences. These skills and strategies are gradually introduced to the 'Reading' component using texts specifically chosen for these activities, which are not necessarily on topics linked to the Read-aloud texts, but do follow a broad theme (e.g., animals) over a number of weeks.

From Grade 3, these two components are linked, with the topic content in the domain units being incorporated into the Reading and Writing components. From Grades 4 to 6, literacy skill development in reading comprehension and writing is integrated with the domain units and novel studies.

This developmental trajectory is important to note because it shows that reading instruction in the early years involves explicit instruction in both phonic decoding and the so-called 'procedural skills' associated with reading comprehension. The knowledge-building component is largely oral at first and gradually introduced to print and independent reading. Although Grissmer et al. (2023) describe "integration and focus across all grades and subjects" (p. 42), the two elements are not integrated in the early grades, and not until students have developed sufficient reading fluency to engage with written texts in a way that builds reading proficiency and knowledge in a reciprocal way.

What is the take home message?

The take-home message is not that comprehension instruction embedded in a sequential knowledge-building curricula is a bad idea or doesn't work. It's a terrific idea for many reasons and is almost certainly the best approach for middle-to-upper primary ( McKeown et al., 2009). It's logical, persuasive and very appealing to embed reading comprehension instruction in interesting and useful content as soon as students are able. Right now, however, scientific research evidence doesn't yet specify that it is the only or most scientifically evidence-based approach to reading comprehension instruction for younger students and should therefore replace other approaches. Petscher et al. (2020) describe content-embedded reading comprehension instruction as "promising but not (yet) compelling" (p. 7). It's still OK to teach comprehension skills and strategies explicitly and quickly and build knowledge, initially side-by-side and then increasingly together.

Grissmer et al. (2023) form this conclusion from their research on the Core Knowledge Curriculum:

"The results of this study would suggest that there are two separate but complementary, cognitive processes involved in development and learning: 'skill building' and 'knowledge accumulation'. Perhaps the phrases that better capture cognitive development would be - 'skill begets skill; knowledge begets knowledge; and almost certainly - skill x knowledge begets skill x knowledge'." (p. 11)

Similarly, Christodoulou (2023), a long-time proponent of knowledge-rich curricula, says,

"[K]nowledge & skills are a false dichotomy. Ingredients and cakes are also a false dichotomy! You can't be pro-cake and anti-ingredient!! If we accept that knowledge and skills are a false dichotomy, then we should also accept that knowledge and skills are NOT on a pendulum. The pendulum is the wrong metaphor. The right metaphor is a pathway, a ladder or a journey." (para. 4)

Responsible teachers, curriculum developers and program publishers that have a commitment to the Science of Reading need to rely on the existing evidence while keeping an eye on the emerging evidence. The emerging evidence base around content-embedded instruction should be monitored and incorporated as appropriate.

In the meantime, as Duke et al. (2021) write,

"Scientific research has revealed many individual instructional practices and combinations of practices that foster reading comprehension development. Some conversations about reading comprehension engage an either/or approach, such as these two statements, respectively: (1) Don't teach strategies; build knowledge. (2) Don't focus on comprehension; focus on word reading. This tendency does not reflect research findings and does not maximize the likelihood that we will meet the needs of all developing readers... As a field, we can advocate for particular research-supported instructional practices without denigrating other research-supported instructional practices." (p. 664)

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Don't discard comprehension strategies - Five from Five

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Share this post Dr Jennifer Buckingham, 23 June 2023 As greater consensus has been reached about how to teach children to decode and read words fluently, the focus of discussion among practitioners and researchers has shifted to reading comprehension. Some of this discussion has centred on the utility of teaching comprehension skills and strategies explicitly [...]

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The Fishtank ELA curriculum aims to develop students into critical readers, writers, and thinkers. We hope to widen their perspectives so that they can better understand themselves and the world around them.

The curriculum is designed around the following guiding principles for ELA. Explore the foundations of Fishtank ELA, including the research base, standard progression, and more information about the guiding principles.

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Fishtank Learning helps teachers engage, challenge and inspire their students with free, high-quality K-12 math and ELA curriculum.

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Overview of Ideas about a Common Curriculum like CKLA

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Overview of Ideas about a Common Curriculum like CKLA

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The Daniels on Research, Ep. 4: E D Hirsch's Vision of Uniting Americans Via a Common Curriculum

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64. Instructionally-Relevant Diagnostic Assessment of Comprehension | 2022 Literacy Symposium

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Knowledge or Comprehension Strategies -- What Should We Teach? | Shanahan on Literacy

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This blog explains what it is that comprehension strategies provide to readers.

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Knowledge Development: The Sixth Pillar of Reading Instruction

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Knowledge Development: The Sixth Pillar of Reading Instruction

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Knowledge acquisition begins in infancy and continues throughout a person's life. Knowledge is everywhere, just waiting to be acquired. Knowledge crosses every subject area and grade level. But how do students build new knowledge and connect that knowledge to what they already know?

How do you show students that you can "have a great heart" both literally and figuratively? How do you help your youngest students get excited about counting-and how can you help them see that art can open the door to this learning? And how do you help students understand that chemical reactions don't just take place in science labs but happen in real life, even affecting works of art like the Statue of Liberty? By ensuring that knowledge-building takes place everywhere.

When students work with rich knowledge-building curricula throughout their school experience, their knowledge grows exponentially. When students are provided the tools to build knowledge, they are given access to understand the world.

Building Layers of Knowledge

To understand how curriculum can help students build enduring knowledge, let's first ground the discussion in working definitions of the types of knowledge that impact students' learning. Understanding the relationship between existing knowledge and new knowledge-and, when needed, how to bridge the gap between the two-is critical for ensuring that students have the right learning conditions in place to build knowledge. Here are three types of knowledge that impact student learning.

Prior knowledge : This is the knowledge that students have previously acquired that they can draw upon to support new learning. Students may acquire this knowledge through their own cultural experiences and practices (i.e., funds of knowledge) or exposure to related content such as a book, TV show, movie, song, or trip to a museum or cultural center. Students also build prior knowledge from previous instruction in school. As students learn more, their prior knowledge grows, but it is important to remember that students' prior knowledge may be incomplete or include misconceptions.

Assumed knowledge: This is the knowledge that an author assumes the reader has already acquired before engaging with their text. No author provides every detail needed to make sense of a text and expects that readers will be able to draw on their own prior knowledge to fill in gaps or to make inferences. Not all students bring the same prior knowledge to a text. If students do not have the assumed knowledge required to understand a text, they are likely to struggle to fully comprehend the text and learn from it.

Background knowledge: This is the knowledge that content-rich curricula can provide to students through strategic selection, sequencing, and repetition of key topics and ideas. Building background knowledge ensures no student is left without important assumed knowledge needed to access new content, regardless of the depth or accuracy of the prior knowledge they had on a topic. Educators may need to explicitly teach contextual information to help students better understand new concepts and content. Today's background knowledge is tomorrow's prior knowledge.

How do these types of knowledge work together in the classroom to help students build enduring knowledge? Let's look at some research and examples.

Helping students activate their prior knowledge primes students for new learning. As Natalie Wexler states in The Knowledge Gap (2019), "The more knowledge a child starts with, the more likely she is to acquire yet more knowledge. She'll read more and understand and retain information better, because knowledge, like Velcro, sticks best to other related knowledge" (35). When students lack sufficient prior knowledge and no one fills in needed background knowledge for them, they'll likely struggle to make meaning of a text. As cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham puts it, "There is much more to comprehending oral or written language than knowing vocabulary and syntax. Comprehension demands background knowledge because language is full of semantic breaks in which knowledge is assumed and, therefore, comprehension depends on making correct inferences" (American Federation of Teachers 2006). When students have knowledge of a topic before engaging in new learning on that topic, their cognitive load is lightened: They're not trying to learn entirely new vocabulary and content while also trying to derive meaning from the text.

One piece of evidence supporting Willingham's point comes from a 1988 study by Donna R. Recht and Lauren Leslie, in which students were asked to retell a written account of a baseball game. This research showed that when students-even strong readers-don't have prior knowledge of the topic of a text, their comprehension of that text is greatly diminished. The research also showed that even readers who struggle may demonstrate higher comprehension of the text if they have prior knowledge of the topic. As Natalie Wexler puts it, "A student's ability to comprehend a text will vary depending on his familiarity with the subject; no degree of 'skill' will help if he lacks the knowledge to understand it" (30).

By helping students access and activate their prior knowledge, teachers can better understand what students already know and can identify students' misconceptions and gaps in their understanding. While prior knowledge is usually an advantage for students in their learning, it can present challenges if the student holds misconceptions or inaccurate information, which can inhibit students' reading comprehension. Smith et al. (2021) highlight studies that found when the information in a text contradicted students' prior knowledge, the students often gave preference to their prior knowledge.

Additionally, when educators ask students to draw upon their prior knowledge, they are encouraging students to bring their own cultural experiences and practices into the classroom. When educators understand the home experiences of their students, they can look for ways to connect students' lived experiences with new learning, making the content feel more real and accessible to students. Researchers Moll et al. found in their 1992 study that teachers are "the bridge between the students' world, theirs and their family's fund of knowledge, and the classroom experience" (137). When teachers welcome students' funds of knowledge into the classroom, students' lived experiences are validated, students learn from each other, and their lived experiences form part of the foundation upon which new knowledge can be built.

Background knowledge and assumed knowledge

In The Knowledge Gap , Natalie Wexler explores how background knowledge relates to assumed knowledge. She writes, "Authors leave out information for the same reasons we all do: they don't want to bore their audiences, they assume readers have a certain amount of knowledge, and they rely on them to use it to fill in what's missing" (52). It may seem as though this is not an insurmountable problem and that students can learn the missing context, but Wexler explains how much assumed knowledge can affect students' comprehension and retention of information: "By the time you've Googled the meaning of a word, you've interrupted the flow of understanding that comprehension depends on; readers begin to find a text difficult to understand when a mere 2 percent of the vocabulary is unfamiliar" (52).

What does it feel like to lack the necessary background knowledge? In his video " Teaching Reading is Teaching Content " (2009), Daniel Willingham offers this potentially mystifying sentence as an example: "This brain scan is fuzzy, so I think the patient was wearing makeup" (2:35). For this sentence to have meaning, the reader must know about brain scans as well as the ingredients of makeup products. As Willingham points out, the background knowledge and assumed knowledge needed to understand the point of the sentence is that "brain scans use magnets, so metal makes images fuzzy" and that "makeup contains trace amounts of metal" (2:53). Without this knowledge, rendering any meaning from the sentence is nearly impossible.

Students who arrive at a text with insufficient prior knowledge will struggle with the text. Before students approach a new text, educators should help supply the necessary background information, but they need to do so in a meaningful way that contributes to learning and is not simply providing disconnected facts. Students can build background knowledge in a multitude of ways. They may look at works of art, listen to a recording, read articles, or read excerpts of other texts that provide background information for the learning task ahead.

Educators must consider students' prior knowledge and the assumed knowledge required by a text or new learning. Only then can educators determine what background knowledge is essential for students to successfully engage in new learning.

Building Knowledge Across Content Areas

While many of the above examples imply that students are accessing a written text, students need background knowledge to make sense of learning outside the ELA classroom too. "Texts" can be any medium for learning-such as videos, art, cultural experiences, music, poetry, and pictures. Therefore, educators must consider the background knowledge required for new learning for students across all content areas.

Imagine students who are reading about cells in the science classroom but have never seen a picture of a cell, do not know the definition of the word, and are thinking it is spelled . These students are likely using so much cognitive power trying to reconcile what the word is and what it might mean that they're not able to retain information about the topic, whether it is provided through text or through direct instruction. Additionally, students may struggle to build enduring knowledge if the information they're learning in the classroom contradicts or challenges their prior knowledge. Students are more likely to build new knowledge if their prior knowledge is acknowledged and they are supported in reassessing their prior knowledge when presented with new information (Campbell, Schwarz, and Windschitl 2016). Without this opportunity to revisit existing knowledge after the introduction of new information, students may treat the new information as facts to be memorized rather than information to connect to their existing knowledge.
Read How can we improve science learning through students' prior knowledge? to learn more about supporting student misconceptions. Read more about the building of enduring math knowledge.

Building Knowledge Within and Across Disciplines

Knowledge acquisition is multifaceted. The same topic revisited in multiple content areas serves as a vehicle for both knowledge building and skill building. Let's take for example a topic that captivates many students: space. For many students, they will only learn about space in the science classroom. But with knowledge-building curricula, the topic of space can provide students a real-world context to apply their learning in the math or English language arts classroom. How can studying space travel through each of these disciplines help students build knowledge?

As early as elementary school, students can start applying mathematical learning to their understanding of space travel. In Eureka Math² grade 2 module 5, as students learn about customary measurement, they explore an example from history-the challenge of calculating the distance to the moon. They consider questions such as the following:

Which unit of measurement would be the best to measure the distance to the moon?

What are human computers and how are their roles important?

What could go wrong if people use different measurement units?

As part of this learning, students build knowledge about the NASA space program as they study the mathematicians, engineers, and human computers-Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan-whose calculations helped NASA safely send the first American astronaut to space and back in 1961 and the first humans to the Moon in 1969. Students also see that what they're learning has a tangible application to the world and to human history.

Students also explore space in grade 3 module 2 of Wit & Wisdom® English language arts. Over the course of this Outer Space module, students read Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 by Brian Floca to examine the historic Apollo 11 moon landing and answer the Essential Question: How do people learn about space? But in learning the history and science behind this event, students will also explore language arts concepts and skills, including why introductory paragraphs are important; how to ask and answer questions about a new text, citing evidence from texts; how to identify the parts of an introductory paragraph for an opinion essay; and how the text helps students build knowledge.

Students revisit Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 when they learn about orbit and rotation in grade 5 module 4 of PhD Science . Students draw on their prior knowledge about the Moon as they seek to answer the Essential Question: How can we explain our observations of the Sun, the Moon, and stars from Earth? Students bring to the module their grade 2 knowledge about how the distance to the Moon is calculated and how that distance can change and about humans' historic relationship with and evolving knowledge of the Moon.

Jenny Taylor

Jenny has over a decade of experience in education policy and research. She has worked with states and districts on the development and implementation of college and career readiness policies, especially around the implementation of rigorous standards and high-quality instructional materials. She has extensive knowledge about K-12 standards, graduation requirements, assessments, and accountability systems nationwide. Additionally, she has conducted research for school districts to address pressing needs in those districts. Jenny received her B.A. in English and education from Bucknell University and her M.Ed. in education policy from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.

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What Is The Relationship Between Learning And Knowledge?

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When students work with rich knowledge-building curricula throughout their school experience, their knowledge grows exponentially.

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Knowledge and comprehension: Never one without the other

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Knowledge and comprehension: Never one without the other

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Episode 1: Knowledge and comprehension: Never one without the other, with Reid Smith and Pamela Snow

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In this episode, learn about knowledge comprehension, the complexity of building background knowledge and the important role it plays in literacy.

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Knowledge-building Literacy Overview for DAA

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Knowledge-building Literacy Overview for DAA

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Knowledge-Building Literacy Overview for DAA