Leveraging Prior Knowledge to Build Understanding

In Frederick, Maryland, third-grade teacher Karen Wills is beginning a lesson on finding claims in a text with her class at Sugarloaf Elementary School . “Yesterday we read the text Edison's Best Invention, and then today they had to identify the claim within that text,” she explains. “But I knew that prior to them identifying a claim, we really needed to see what they knew about a claim.” So Wills planned an activity to help her students tap into their prior knowledge.

Wills begins by asking students to independently jot down their own ideas and definitions of the word “claim” from memory—a tried-and-true retrieval practice activity. Then Wills walks the whole class through a word mapping exercise where she collects all of the students’ ideas up on the board before finally sharing the definition found in their text books and revealing that the two closely match.

Learning Science Partners’ Jim Heal explains why this practice is so effective. “The teacher could simply have defined the word on behalf of the students. Instead, what the teacher did was invite those learners to create a word map to make their own points of reference.” This process allowed the group to arrive at a collective understanding of core terminology, and gave Wills a chance to address any misunderstandings in real time. 

To further reinforce the concept, Wills then asks her students to sort out statements into two categories—claims and not claims—an exercise sometimes called examples and non-examples. As they work in pairs, Wills circles the room, probing students to explain their thinking. Additionally, she challenges them by asking how they would change a statement to make it into a claim, another step in the lesson that Heal cites as an excellent way to solidify students’ understanding. “‘What would have to happen to this phrase in order for it to become a claim?’ is an excellent question to ask,” he says. “In order to answer, students must rationalize their thinking and, in so doing, they're making explicit their own definition of why a claim is what it is.”

When Wills connects her students’ prior knowledge to the current lesson through a series of simple but highly effective activities, she sets the stage for a deeper understanding of the core concepts they were learning that day—and beyond.

This video is part of our How Learning Happens series, which explores teaching practices grounded in the science of learning and human development.