Priming the Background Knowledge

Building off of my last post, "Helping with Reading Comprehension," I decided to make an informative binder regarding how to help with improving reading comprehension for my student's paraprofessional to use when she worked on reading with him in a 1:1 situation.  In it, I numbered the steps to go through when addressing reading comprehension, and I added a narrative explaining:

• what each step means and why we might be doing this with the student
• what to do for each step
• provided some visual boards that I made to go along with the steps when applicable

I wanted to make the instructions easy to follow, and user friendly.  I laminated the visuals so that they could be written on with Vis a Vis marker and erased for re use.  Paras and teachers often do not have the time to continue to make visuals or repeated and multiple adaptations.  Also, I have found that if the intervention does not require a lot of extra work on the person carrying it out, it is more likely to be implemented.

I apologize for the glare- this is step 1 in the binder and is written as below:

**This is how I wrote up the steps for the binder:

Step 1-  Priming the Background Knowledge

What is this/what does this mean?
-helps students connect what they know to new information and skills
-the more readers know about the topic, the easier it is for them to connect the text with background knowledge
-if background knowledge is inaccurate, comprehension is more difficult
-if given accurate background knowledge that supports the text, comprehension is enhanced
-kids with autism have language deficits that result in a lack of general knowledge;  this causes difficulty with being able to integrate what they already know with the text

Do This:
-take relevant information from the text, and expand on teaching about those individual things/concepts.  The classroom teacher decides which concepts in the reading he/she wants the student to learn and have knowledge of relative to the regular curriculum.  This may be just a few key concepts, or several.

-bring in examples of items that are talked about in the text  *example:  if the story/text
is about oceans and what is found in an ocean, bring in several types of shells for the student to observe, show them an aquarium of salt water fish, etc.

-find books/videos/ebooks/podcasts or other media that provide general information about what is found in the text and read them to or along with the student, have the student view them, etc.  Some useful sites to locate such materials include:
*www.youtube.com
*www.tarheelreader.org
*Tumblebooks can be found on some public library websites (as in our hometown library)
*find books in the school library
*the classroom teacher or special education staff may have additional media sites available or accessible to them through the school

What are Tumblebooks?  Find out here:
http://www.tumblebooks.com/library/asp/customer_login.asp?accessdenied=%2Flibrary%2Fasp%2Fhome_tumblebooks%2Easp

What is Tarheelreader?  Find out here:
http://tarheelreader.org/