Chapter 2: Placing Background Knowledge in Daily Teaching

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Chapter 3Teacher as Archeologist Assessing
Background Knowledge
Fisher, D. Frey, N. (2009). Background
Knowledge The Missing Piece of the Comprehension
Puzzle. Portsmouth, NH Heinemann.
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Todays Purposes

• Discuss the ways to determine the background
  knowledge a student might possess
• Examine the role of misconceptions on learning
• Review assessment tools to expose background
  knowledge

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Table Talk

• Discuss a time when you initially believed one
  thing about a student and then learned something
  unexpected. How did you learn this? What teacher
  skills helped you?

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Teacher As Archeologist

• Surveying Knowing where to look
• Excavating Bringing it to the surface
• Examining Using tools for analysis

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Surveying Knowledge

• Requires knowing where to look
• Incidental knowledge vs. core knowledge
• This is the difference between what is
  interesting vs. what is essential
• Wiggins McTighe enduring understandings

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Comparing Incidental and Core Knowledge
Core Incidental
Foundational to understanding main concepts. Representation Interesting but incidental.
Requires multiple exposures and experiences. Transmission Can be explained or defined easily (label, fact, or name).
Needed again to understand future concepts. Transferability Specific to this concept unlikely to be used later.
Will be remembered after details are forgotten. Enduring Not likely to be recalled later.
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The Cask of the Amontillado (Poe)
Core Incidental
Knowledge of the era regarding the importance of maintaining reputations. Importance of revenge to resolve grievances. Role of family reputation through generations. Symbolism of the Montressor coat of arms. The unreliable narrator as a literary device. Impunity getting away with something with no punishment. Carnival celebrations. Amontillado is a kind of wine. Wine cellars and catacombs are underground. Freemasons are a secret society.
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Core Concept in Middle School Plane Geometry
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Excavating Knowledge

• Bringing it to the surface so that students
  notice what they know and do not know
• Focus is on anticipating misconceptions

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Misconceptions

• Represent a fundamental flaw in knowledge and
  reasoning
• Cascading effect
• Building new knowledge on a shaky foundation
  results in selective learning to justify the
  misconception

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Resources for Misconceptions
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Anticipation Guide in Earth Science
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Opinionnaire in History
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Table Talk

• What are misconceptions common to your
  discipline? What instructional routines can you
  use to unearth these misconceptions?

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Examining Knowledge

• Requires tools for analysis
• Can include previous benchmark assessments
• Informal reading inventories to determine reading
  levels
• Metacomprehension Strategies Index
• Cloze assessments
• Interest surveys

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Metacomprehension

• Metacomprehension Strategies Index (Schmitt,
  1990)
• 25-item assessment that can be administered in
  one session
• Example item
• While I am reading, it is a good idea to
• A. Keep track of how long it is taking me to
  read the story
• B. Check to see if I can answer any of the
  questions I asked
  
  before I started reading
• C. Read the title to see what the story is
  going to be about
• D. Add the missing details to the pictures.

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Cloze Assessments

• Originally developed for readability
• Now used to assess content knowledge
• Teacher-made
• 250-word passage
• Every fifth word deleted
• Scoring
• Independent level 60 correct or above
• Instructional level 4059 correct
• Frustration level 39 or below

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Constructing a Cloze

• Locate a passage of about 250 words (a summary
  paragraph from the textbook is a good choice)
• Leave first sentence intact so that the reader
  can understand the context
• Remove every fifth word (even the little words)
  dont change this!
• No word bank

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Differentiation of Cloze

• Can reduce overall length of passage (do not go
  below 150 words)
• Can increase frequency of blanks to every seventh
  word

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Interest Surveys

• Used in market research
• Commonly used to determine reading interests
• Rarely used for other purposes
• Why?

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Interest Survey in Biology
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Table Talk

• What practices can you incorporate into your
  classroom in order to assess background
  knowledge?

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Assessing Your Practice
Use the rubric to determine your goals for
addressing misconceptions and assessing
background knowledge.
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Building Your Own Background Knowledge

• Visit the MOSART (Misconception Oriented
  Standards-based Assessment Resource for Teachers)
  at http//mosart.mspnet.org/. This center is
  developing misconceptions assessments in science
  and math.
• Take a look at the Saskatoon (CN) Public Schools
  website support called Instructional Strategies
  Online. Their resource for the cloze procedure is
  at http//olc.spsd.sk.ca/DE/PD/Instr/strats/cloze/
  index.html
• Subscribe to Voice of Literacy, a free podcast
  series available at http//www.voiceofliteracy.org
  /. These are short (15 minutes) and informative
  and address many aspects of childrens and
  adolescents literacy.