SIOP Building Background
[post by: Kelly Prior]
The article starts off by stating that although a great amount of exposure to English is crucial within the classroom, the actual quality of the teaching is just as important. I am sure we have all been in classes where the teacher hands out a worksheet or assignment and gives no background, instruction or warm-up for the activity. For the most part, students are lost and confused on directions and the actual point of the lesson. In situations like these, I find myself asking, “What am I supposed to be getting out of this?” Building background is so important, especially within ELL classrooms, because it guides the students in the direction that they need to be headed. In this reading, the author focuses on how building background can influence vocabulary lessons in a classroom.
The article uses an example of explaining key vocabulary terms before and during a lesson. This type of background helps a student listen for important words and basically preps them for what is to come in the lesson. I found that the reading focuses a lot on providing “meaningful experiences” within the classroom. This might seem like a no-brainer at first, because every teacher wants to make learning meaningful for his/her students; however, it requires some time and thought on the planning part of instruction. They mention the fact that many kids draw their background experiences from prior knowledge, and then use that knowledge to make connections to the current lesson or activity. However, as future ELL teachers, we need to remember the fact that all children come from different backgrounds, cultures, countries, languages, religions, etc. They were not all born in America, and their prior knowledge of a concept is likely to be completely different from another child’s prior knowledge.
I found it interesting that the article differentiated between “activating prior knowledge” and “building background” within the classroom. I never truly thought about how they could be different when it comes to instruction. In the long run, I think the two concepts are very similar if not the same. Ways that they suggest to jumpstart some prior knowledge within the classroom are reading a story, showing pictures or watching a video. However, there are many other ways to build some background for an activity such as discussion, brainstorming, graphic organizers, warm-ups and so many other options.
The article continues by offering many building background ideas and scenarios for vocabulary production in a classroom setting. They have many helpful activities such as vocabulary games, word study books, lists, concept maps and more. The key idea to all of this is that background and prior knowledge will almost always positively influence a child’s learning and understanding. Also, the more exposure a child has to a word, the better they are at recognizing and producing the word in the future.
TASK: Think of a class that you had in school where the teacher did not give any type of building background, and you and/or many of your classmates were lost or confused. Explain what class you had, what type of activity you were doing and why you were confused. Then, explain how the teacher could have enhanced your learning and enjoyment by providing some type of building background activity. What do you wish the teacher would have included before you started the lesson?
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My junior year in high school I was in an AP English class. My teacher was VERY laid back, which of course everyone loved, but I felt like everything we did was just busy work. We would read stuff like MacBeth and were told to make a story board after we read the book. We never did anything with the story boards once they were finished so needless to say, when we got assignments like that again, no one ever put any effort into them because they knew they wouldn't be talked about or analyzed. Busy work! Now I know what the point of a story board is, but my teacher never explained to us why it was important to make them. We'd read, make a story board, hand it in, and get 100%. We wouldn't go over the books as a class, we just moved from one to the next. If my teacher had explained why making story boards for HER class were beneficial or what they were going to accomplish, I would've put more effort into mine and actually paid more attention to what was going on in the book. I wish she would've told us what to focus on in the book, instead of just letting us decide. All that did was allow us to pick out random points and draw it on our story board. One last thing I want to mention is that we were never tested in the class, so no one had any motivation to actually learn the content of the books. I was obviously fine with that, but if my teacher actually wanted us to get something out of her class she should've told us why it was important to understand the material and to test us! Since we were only graded on our story boards (which always got 100% grades), we didn't worry about learning the actual content. All in all, I like to know what to focus on; the most important aspects of a lesson and why I need to know the content, otherwise it seems pointless/like busy work.
ReplyDeleteMany of my language learning classes here at MSU are content based. The professors are free to choose a topic and class time is dedicated to reading articles, group discussions and presentations in the target language of Spanish. I have a class that focuses on the culture and politics surrounding the Mexico/United States border. Needless to say, it’s a very controversial topic which makes for great debate. However, many of the students lack the basic background information essential to understanding the depth of these issues. For one specific lesson, we were asked to describe the difference between northern Mexican and Chicano literature. During the discussion, one of my classmates asked “What exactly is a Chicano?” Obviously, it is very difficult to make a comparison when you do not understand the basic definitions. I think it would have been helpful if the professor had lead a class discussion before we began reading and working in groups. Simple questions such as “What do you think of when you hear the word Chicano?” or asking us to list characteristics of northern Mexican culture on the board would have been great ways to build background. The students that are more familiar with the content would then be able to share their knowledge with the entire class, and hopefully answer some other students’ questions.
ReplyDeleteLast spring I took an ISP lab. I found the lab to be my least favorite course that semester. At the beginning of each class, my TA would quickly explain our activity and then we would break into our groups to work on it. Every class period we had a new activity, and a new packet of worksheet to be completed that day. We would do the experiment with our groups, and then finish the worksheets together. I almost always found the activities to be too complex and the packets to be too long to finish properly in the time we had. My group members and I would always be scribbling down answers at the very end of class. It was very difficult for us to complete the packets. Not only was the workload too much, but we were often very confused on the experiment. The brief explanation at the beginning of class was not enough. If it had been better planned and explained, there would have been fewer questions from everyone throughout the class period. Overall, the class structure was poor, and this led to frustration for us students, and also caused us to learn less than we could have. Even though our TA provided a beginning lesson, my situation presents the fact that the demonstration is important, but the quality of presentation is even more important.
ReplyDeleteAs a student I have many experiences where teachers pass out an assignment, give a due date, and leave it at that. One specific example was in an English class I took last semester. The content, in terms of the books we read, of the course was fabulous, it was focused on having us as students question the meaning of texts and our own personal oppinions in terms of literature. Class time was always filled with great class discussion lead by the teacher. However in such a class there was not very many assignments. When a four assignments account for ninety percent of a grade it is nice to have some guidelines to follow. We had to write two extensive papers, complete one presentation, and then teh final exam, all of which I, as a student, felt very ill prepared for.
ReplyDeleteThe presentation in particular was very frustrating. It was a partner assignment and we were to choose any topic related to the readings done and present. The presentations took up four entire class days through out the semester. For the most part they were very dry and hard to pay attention to. At the end of the semester we had to reflect on our final how the presentations broadened the meanings of the texts we had read. Had the professor mentioned that the purpose of the presentations was to bring new information and contrasting views of the texts then maybe the presentations would have been more benefiscial. Instead, they were very repetitive, often reiterating what had already been said in class. If we as students were prepared to teach a mini lesson in a sense to enhance the meaning then the presentations would have been a much more productive use of time. It would have taken the teacher minimal effort to give this background information, however the lack of determined the outcome of the presentations.
I am currently placed in a 6-8 ELL classroom. Last week the students were learning about irregular verbs. In a class of 35 with children at different levels of English makes it a very difficult task. I was there during the second day of the lesson. When beginning the class the teacher reitterated to the students why they were learning about the irregular verbs. She explained that it is important, especially since English was not their first language, that they understand irregular verbs to that they can speack correctly (grammatically) and write well. That by learning the irregular verbs they would be able to take a step in bettering their English. The result was a class full of kids who actively participated in the lesson and almost all of the students receiving higher than 80 percent on the mini quiz at the end. Instead of just diving in to the irregular verbs the teacher provided background information to the students so they would invest their interest.
It was an advanced math class in college. Often my teacher would begin class with a problem, but the problem would be a new concept. We (as a class and my teacher) would work our way through the problem until we agreed on a result. This was always very confusing for me. I never knew what we were doing or why we were doing it during the beginning of class. After we completed the problem, my teacher would then inform us what we would be learning for the day. He also told us why we were learning it and how it applied to real world situations. This was all good, but always came a little too late.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, if my teacher would have first explained the objectives for the day and the reason why we were learning it (background knowledge) before working through the problem together as a class he would have had a lot less blank stares. Instead of the class being confused when we were working through the first problem, if he would have told us the objective we might have been able to come to a conclusion by ourselves.
For me personally, if I start out in a class confused it takes me a long time to clarify the concepts. Usually it was the middle or towards the end of class when I finally understood why we were studying the math problem (background knowledge). By this time, I was already far behind the class. It was always a struggle for me to keep up with my classmates in class.
I had a teacher in high school who would randomly give us projects without explaining them to us or how they were relative to the class. The class was sociology and the class was very repetitive. We'd take guided notes, do a project and then have a quiz. the projects however had nothing to do with what we were learning and it seemed like the teacher just needed a way to blow time so we'd have projects that'd we work on for a week. I wouldn't want to do the projects because I found them pointless and if my teacher had even tried to give us background information on the topic or an explanation as to why we were doing these projects, I would have been more motivated to actually try my best on the projects.
ReplyDeleteAs a teacher it is hard to find the balance between giving freedom and flexibility and giving enough guidance. I have found that when I give more flexibility the results tend to be better for most students but for some students (often the academically good students) the grades drop. It has pros and cons, I think.
ReplyDeleteWhat I would like to see more in your discussions is to hypothesize why you were given these assignments in these ways. What were the objectives? Were they achieved? Could they have been achieved differently or been communicated differently?
It is always easy to say something did not work, but much harder to make it better.