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Background Information in an Essay: How to Write and Example

Background Information in an Essay

When assigned an essay, it is advisable to assume that your target audience does not know anything about your topic hence the reason why you should provide background information.

This enhances your audience’s understanding of the essay topic and subject matter. They will know what to expect in the body paragraphs of the essay.

Even though the essay has been assigned to you by your instructor and they already know the expectations, it is important to provide some background information in the introduction. 

What is the Background of an Essay?

A background in an essay is the part or point within the essay where you provide contextual knowledge or introductory information to the readers to help them understand the essay’s subject matter. 

The background sets the stage for the main arguments or discussion that will be presented in the essay. 

What is Background Information in an Essay?

“Background information” in an essay is the content that is provided within an essay’s background to provide the readers with introductory information or contextual knowledge. 

The background information helps orient your readers and equip them with the relevant foundational knowledge and context to understand the main discussions and arguments that follow within the body paragraphs. 

When you provide the background information within your essay, you are establishing to your readers the relevance of your topic. This gives them the relevant information to engage with the content of your essay.   

Also Read : Can a Literature Review have Pictures, Diagrams or Charts?

How to Write Background Information in an Essay

1. identify the key elements.

When writing background information in an essay, it is important to determine the key aspects of your topic that need to be addressed within the section.

Normally, the background information of an essay includes elements like a brief introduction of your topic, key definitions and concepts, historical context, relevant data or facts, and an overview of the existing research relating to your topic. 

2. Conduct Research and Gather Relevant Information

Before writing the background information of your essay, ensure that you have conducted thorough research so that you can gather the relevant information and sources that are related to your topic. 

It would be difficult to briefly introduce the topic and provide a brief historical context without understanding your topic through research. If possible start discussion posts on relevant platforms to gather further insights.

You should only utilize reputable sources such as scholarly articles and journals, books, and credible websites so that the information you provide in the background is accurate and reliable. 

3. Organize the Information

Once you have researched and gathered the relevant information concerning your topic, organize it in such a way that it is logical and coherent. 

Put into consideration the flow of the information in addition to how it will effectively support the main discussion or argument in your essay. 

4. Begin with a Broad Introduction

When writing the background information section of the essay, start with a broad introduction to your topic. 

Give a brief overview of the topic’s subject matter and its significance. This will set the context of the essay and grab your readers’ attention. 

5. Give Historical Context if Applicable

If your essay’s topic has some historical aspects, provide relevant historical background information. 

Here, you should provide key historical developments, events, or circumstances that will help your readers understand the current issue or situation presented in your topic. 

6. Define Key Concepts and Terms

Introduce and define any specialized jargon, terms, or concepts that may be unfamiliar to your readers. 

This ensures that the readers have a clear understanding of the terminologies and concepts used throughout the essay. 

7. Present Relevant Data or Facts

Include relevant facts, data, or statistics that will help in establishing the magnitude or scope of your topic. This can give a qualitative or quantitative perspective on the issues discussed. 

8. Summarize Existing Research if Applicable

When your essay is part of a greater academic discourse, briefly summarize the key arguments or findings from relevant scholarly sources . 

This shows that you acknowledge the existing body of knowledge concerning your topic and highlights your essay’s contribution to the academic discourse. 

In summary, when you are writing the background information in an essay, it is imperative to ensure that you present it clearly and concisely in addition to being relevant to the essay’s topic. 

Avoid spending a lot of time on it and providing too much information and details.  

Also Read : Time to Write a Thesis or Dissertation: Tips to Finish Fast

How to Write Background Section in Research Writing

The background section in research writing differs from that of an essay because it gives a more in-depth and comprehensive review of the existing research and literature related to your topic. 

When writing the background section in research, you should:

Conduct a Literature Review

You should conduct a thorough literature review before writing the background section.

This will help you identify and father relevant scholarly sources like books, journal articles, and conference papers. 

Organize the Literature

Analyze and organize the gathered literature per the relevant theories, themes, or key research findings. 

Note the major concepts and gaps within the existing research that your study wishes to address. 

Provide a Historical Context

Provide a brief historical context of your topic that traces the evolution of the research question or development of the field. 

This helps your readers understand how your research fits within the broader scholarly discourse, in addition to how the ideas have progressed. 

Present Key Concepts and Theories

Briefly introduce and explain the key concepts, models, and theories that are relevant to the research. 

This shows that you understand the theoretical framework that underpins your research. It also provides your research question’s foundation. 

Highlight Research Questions and Gaps

Identify the limitations or gaps within the existing literature that your study aims to fill. 

State the objectives or research questions of your study and explain how they will address the identified gaps. 

Justify your Research’s Significance

Explain the relevance and significance of your research within the larger practical or academic context. 

Demonstrate how your study contributes to existing knowledge, addresses a practical problem, or advances the field. 

Also Read : Should a Literature Review be Critical? Tips How to do it

Background Information Example

An example of background information from an essay with the topic “The Benefits of Exercise on Mental Health” is:

“Exercise has long been recognized as a fundamental component of a healthy lifestyle. Beyond its physical benefits, several studies have shown that exercise also has a positive impact on mental health. 

Regular physical activity has been linked to improved mood, reduced symptoms of anxiety and depression, and enhanced overall well-being. Research has shown that exercise can mitigate the risk of developing mental health disorders. It has been associated with a lower incidence of conditions such as depression and anxiety, in addition to playing a crucial role in the management and treatment of these conditions as well.

Understanding the benefits of exercise on mental health is essential for individuals seeking to improve their overall well-being. By incorporating regular physical activity into their routines, individuals can experience improved mood, reduced stress levels, and enhanced mental resilience.

This essay explores the existing literature on the relationship between exercise and mental health, highlighting the specific mechanisms through which exercise positively affects mental well-being. The aim is to further emphasize the importance of exercise as a tool for promoting mental health and well-being”.

Also Read : How to Tell If a Research Paper Is Good: Tips from A to Z

Do’s & Don’ts when Writing Background Information

As earlier discussed in this article, the Do’s when writing background information includes providing the necessary context, including relevant facts and data, citing credible sources, focusing on relevance to the topic, and being concise. 

Do not include irrelevant information or overgeneralize, do not plagiarize, and do not overwhelm your readers with too much information or details since they will be provided in the body. 

Josh Jasen or JJ as we fondly call him, is a senior academic editor at Grade Bees in charge of the writing department. When not managing complex essays and academic writing tasks, Josh is busy advising students on how to pass assignments. In his spare time, he loves playing football or walking with his dog around the park.

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Background information identifies and describes the history and nature of a well-defined research problem with reference to contextualizing existing literature. The background information should indicate the root of the problem being studied, appropriate context of the problem in relation to theory, research, and/or practice , its scope, and the extent to which previous studies have successfully investigated the problem, noting, in particular, where gaps exist that your study attempts to address. Background information does not replace the literature review section of a research paper; it is intended to place the research problem within a specific context and an established plan for its solution.

Fitterling, Lori. Researching and Writing an Effective Background Section of a Research Paper. Kansas City University of Medicine & Biosciences; Creating a Research Paper: How to Write the Background to a Study. DurousseauElectricalInstitute.com; Background Information: Definition of Background Information. Literary Devices Definition and Examples of Literary Terms.

Importance of Having Enough Background Information

Background information expands upon the key points stated in the beginning of your introduction but is not intended to be the main focus of the paper. It generally supports the question, what is the most important information the reader needs to understand before continuing to read the paper? Sufficient background information helps the reader determine if you have a basic understanding of the research problem being investigated and promotes confidence in the overall quality of your analysis and findings. This information provides the reader with the essential context needed to conceptualize the research problem and its significance before moving on to a more thorough analysis of prior research.

Forms of contextualization included in background information can include describing one or more of the following:

• Cultural -- placed within the learned behavior of a specific group or groups of people.
• Economic -- of or relating to systems of production and management of material wealth and/or business activities.
• Gender -- located within the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with being self-identified as male, female, or other form of  gender expression.
• Historical -- the time in which something takes place or was created and how the condition of time influences how you interpret it.
• Interdisciplinary -- explanation of theories, concepts, ideas, or methodologies borrowed from other disciplines applied to the research problem rooted in a discipline other than the discipline where your paper resides.
• Philosophical -- clarification of the essential nature of being or of phenomena as it relates to the research problem.
• Physical/Spatial -- reflects the meaning of space around something and how that influences how it is understood.
• Political -- concerns the environment in which something is produced indicating it's public purpose or agenda.
• Social -- the environment of people that surrounds something's creation or intended audience, reflecting how the people associated with something use and interpret it.
• Temporal -- reflects issues or events of, relating to, or limited by time. Concerns past, present, or future contextualization and not just a historical past.

Background information can also include summaries of important research studies . This can be a particularly important element of providing background information if an innovative or groundbreaking study about the research problem laid a foundation for further research or there was a key study that is essential to understanding your arguments. The priority is to summarize for the reader what is known about the research problem before you conduct the analysis of prior research. This is accomplished with a general summary of the foundational research literature [with citations] that document findings that inform your study's overall aims and objectives.

NOTE : Research studies cited as part of the background information of your introduction should not include very specific, lengthy explanations. This should be discussed in greater detail in your literature review section. If you find a study requiring lengthy explanation, consider moving it to the literature review section.

ANOTHER NOTE : In some cases, your paper's introduction only needs to introduce the research problem, explain its significance, and then describe a road map for how you are going to address the problem; the background information basically forms the introduction part of your literature review. That said, while providing background information is not required, including it in the introduction is a way to highlight important contextual information that could otherwise be hidden or overlooked by the reader if placed in the literature review section.

Background of the Problem Section: What do you Need to Consider? Anonymous. Harvard University; Hopkins, Will G. How to Write a Research Paper. SPORTSCIENCE, Perspectives/Research Resources. Department of Physiology and School of Physical Education, University of Otago, 1999; Green, L. H. How to Write the Background/Introduction Section. Physics 499 Powerpoint slides. University of Illinois; Pyrczak, Fred. Writing Empirical Research Reports: A Basic Guide for Students of the Social and Behavioral Sciences . 8th edition. Glendale, CA: Pyrczak Publishing, 2014; Stevens, Kathleen C. “Can We Improve Reading by Teaching Background Information?.” Journal of Reading 25 (January 1982): 326-329; Woodall, W. Gill. Writing the Background and Significance Section. Senior Research Scientist and Professor of Communication. Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse, and Addictions. University of New Mexico.

Structure and Writing Style

Providing background information in the introduction of a research paper serves as a bridge that links the reader to the research problem . Precisely how long and in-depth this bridge should be is largely dependent upon how much information you think the reader will need to know in order to fully understand the problem being discussed and to appreciate why the issues you are investigating are important.

From another perspective, the length and detail of background information also depends on the degree to which you need to demonstrate to your professor how much you understand the research problem. Keep this in mind because providing pertinent background information can be an effective way to demonstrate that you have a clear grasp of key issues, debates, and concepts related to your overall study.

The structure and writing style of your background information can vary depending upon the complexity of your research and/or the nature of the assignment. However, in most cases it should be limited to only one to two paragraphs in your introduction.

Given this, here are some questions to consider while writing this part of your introduction :

• Are there concepts, terms, theories, or ideas that may be unfamiliar to the reader and, thus, require additional explanation?
• Are there historical elements that need to be explored in order to provide needed context, to highlight specific people, issues, or events, or to lay a foundation for understanding the emergence of a current issue or event?
• Are there theories, concepts, or ideas borrowed from other disciplines or academic traditions that may be unfamiliar to the reader and therefore require further explanation?
• Is there a key study or small set of studies that set the stage for understanding the topic and frames why it is important to conduct further research on the topic?
• Y our study uses a method of analysis never applied before;
• Your study investigates a very esoteric or complex research problem;
• Your study introduces new or unique variables that need to be taken into account ; or,
• Your study relies upon analyzing unique texts or documents, such as, archival materials or primary documents like diaries or personal letters that do not represent the established body of source literature on the topic?

Almost all introductions to a research problem require some contextualizing, but the scope and breadth of background information varies depending on your assumption about the reader's level of prior knowledge . However, despite this assessment, background information should be brief and succinct and sets the stage for the elaboration of critical points or in-depth discussion of key issues in the literature review section of your paper.

Writing Tip

Background Information vs. the Literature Review

Incorporating background information into the introduction is intended to provide the reader with critical information about the topic being studied, such as, highlighting and expanding upon foundational studies conducted in the past, describing important historical events that inform why and in what ways the research problem exists, defining key components of your study [concepts, people, places, phenomena] and/or placing the research problem within a particular context. Although introductory background information can often blend into the literature review portion of the paper, essential background information should not be considered a substitute for a comprehensive review and synthesis of relevant research literature.

Hart, Cris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998; Pyrczak, Fred. Writing Empirical Research Reports: A Basic Guide for Students of the Social and Behavioral Sciences . 8th edition. Glendale, CA: Pyrczak Publishing, 2014.

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Background Information

Definition of background information.

As the name suggests, background information means all information that a reader requires to increase his awareness of the topic an essay is going to explain. Background information is placed shortly after the hook or attention grabber. Both are intertwined, as the hook cannot be separated from the background information.

Both are connected with a transition word. Usually, in a five-paragraph essay, background information comprises three to five sentences . However, in a longer essay, it could be more than 10 sentences or even a full paragraph. Generally it needs to be as long as necessary to inform readers on the topic. There are as many types of background information as there are types of essay , some of which are as follows:

Types of Background Information

• Description Type Description type of background information often describes the topic through sensory description involving all five senses: sense of touch, sense of smell, sense of sight, sense of hearing, and sense of taste. Words are used to make the reader experience any of these or all.
• Process Type In a process type of background information, a writer provides an introduction to the topic, telling readers what process will be used to achieve a goal, or complete a task.
• Definition Type In a definition type of background information, readers become aware of the definition of the topic, as well as how it differs from other such similar terms and words.
• Classification / Division Type In a classification / division type of background information, readers are informed about the topic, how it is classified and divided, and what further derivations it could have. These are further explained in body paragraphs .
• Argumentative Type In an argumentative type of background information, readers are informed about the topic, the arguments being made in support of the question about the topic ,and opposing arguments.
• Persuasive Type A persuasive type of background information attempts to persuade the reader, by giving information about a question.

Examples of Background Information in Literature

Example #1:  politics and english language (by george orwell).

“ Now , it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language.”

This is the second paragraph of an essay by George Orwell . It clearly tells how English language has faced decline in its standard due to certain causes. It is a good background to the topic of the essay “Politics and English Language.”

Example #2: I Twitter, Therefore I am (by Peggy Orenstein)

“I came late to Twitter. I might have skipped the phenomenon altogether, but I have a book coming out this winter , and publishers, scrambling to promote 360,000- character tomes in a 140-character world, push authors to rally their “tweeps” to the cause. Leaving aside the question of whether that actually boosts sales, I felt pressure to produce. I quickly mastered the Twitterati’s unnatural self-consciousness: processing my experience instantaneously, packaging life as I lived it.”

This is the background information of a beautiful essay by Peggy Orenstein, which she wrote for The New York Times . This background information shows that she cannot stop tweeting, as it has become her second nature.

Example #3: Is Google Making Us Stupid (by Nicholas Carr)

“For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded.”

These are just a few lines of background information in the essay of Nicholas Carr. These lines clearly show that the essay is about the Internet. As the essay is quite long, background information comprises an entire paragraph.

Function of Background Information

Background information serves the purpose of making readers aware of what is going to be discussed in the essay. It makes readers conscious of the pros and cons of the topic, and readies them to explore it further. It also presents a good assessment of what is to come. In a way, it enables readers to predict what is to come next, and how it is to be presented.

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• How to structure an essay: Templates and tips

How to Structure an Essay | Tips & Templates

Published on September 18, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

The basic structure of an essay always consists of an introduction , a body , and a conclusion . But for many students, the most difficult part of structuring an essay is deciding how to organize information within the body.

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Table of contents

The basics of essay structure, chronological structure, compare-and-contrast structure, problems-methods-solutions structure, signposting to clarify your structure, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about essay structure.

There are two main things to keep in mind when working on your essay structure: making sure to include the right information in each part, and deciding how you’ll organize the information within the body.

Parts of an essay

The three parts that make up all essays are described in the table below.

Order of information

You’ll also have to consider how to present information within the body. There are a few general principles that can guide you here.

The first is that your argument should move from the simplest claim to the most complex . The body of a good argumentative essay often begins with simple and widely accepted claims, and then moves towards more complex and contentious ones.

For example, you might begin by describing a generally accepted philosophical concept, and then apply it to a new topic. The grounding in the general concept will allow the reader to understand your unique application of it.

The second principle is that background information should appear towards the beginning of your essay . General background is presented in the introduction. If you have additional background to present, this information will usually come at the start of the body.

The third principle is that everything in your essay should be relevant to the thesis . Ask yourself whether each piece of information advances your argument or provides necessary background. And make sure that the text clearly expresses each piece of information’s relevance.

The sections below present several organizational templates for essays: the chronological approach, the compare-and-contrast approach, and the problems-methods-solutions approach.

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The chronological approach (sometimes called the cause-and-effect approach) is probably the simplest way to structure an essay. It just means discussing events in the order in which they occurred, discussing how they are related (i.e. the cause and effect involved) as you go.

A chronological approach can be useful when your essay is about a series of events. Don’t rule out other approaches, though—even when the chronological approach is the obvious one, you might be able to bring out more with a different structure.

Explore the tabs below to see a general template and a specific example outline from an essay on the invention of the printing press.

• Thesis statement
• Discussion of event/period
• Consequences
• Importance of topic
• Strong closing statement
• Claim that the printing press marks the end of the Middle Ages
• Background on the low levels of literacy before the printing press
• Thesis statement: The invention of the printing press increased circulation of information in Europe, paving the way for the Reformation
• High levels of illiteracy in medieval Europe
• Literacy and thus knowledge and education were mainly the domain of religious and political elites
• Consequence: this discouraged political and religious change
• Invention of the printing press in 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg
• Implications of the new technology for book production
• Consequence: Rapid spread of the technology and the printing of the Gutenberg Bible
• Trend for translating the Bible into vernacular languages during the years following the printing press’s invention
• Luther’s own translation of the Bible during the Reformation
• Consequence: The large-scale effects the Reformation would have on religion and politics
• Summarize the history described
• Stress the significance of the printing press to the events of this period

Essays with two or more main subjects are often structured around comparing and contrasting . For example, a literary analysis essay might compare two different texts, and an argumentative essay might compare the strengths of different arguments.

There are two main ways of structuring a compare-and-contrast essay: the alternating method, and the block method.

Alternating

In the alternating method, each paragraph compares your subjects in terms of a specific point of comparison. These points of comparison are therefore what defines each paragraph.

The tabs below show a general template for this structure, and a specific example for an essay comparing and contrasting distance learning with traditional classroom learning.

• Synthesis of arguments
• Topical relevance of distance learning in lockdown
• Increasing prevalence of distance learning over the last decade
• Thesis statement: While distance learning has certain advantages, it introduces multiple new accessibility issues that must be addressed for it to be as effective as classroom learning
• Classroom learning: Ease of identifying difficulties and privately discussing them
• Distance learning: Difficulty of noticing and unobtrusively helping
• Classroom learning: Difficulties accessing the classroom (disability, distance travelled from home)
• Distance learning: Difficulties with online work (lack of tech literacy, unreliable connection, distractions)
• Classroom learning: Tends to encourage personal engagement among students and with teacher, more relaxed social environment
• Distance learning: Greater ability to reach out to teacher privately
• Sum up, emphasize that distance learning introduces more difficulties than it solves
• Stress the importance of addressing issues with distance learning as it becomes increasingly common
• Distance learning may prove to be the future, but it still has a long way to go

In the block method, each subject is covered all in one go, potentially across multiple paragraphs. For example, you might write two paragraphs about your first subject and then two about your second subject, making comparisons back to the first.

The tabs again show a general template, followed by another essay on distance learning, this time with the body structured in blocks.

• Point 1 (compare)
• Point 2 (compare)
• Point 3 (compare)
• Point 4 (compare)
• Advantages: Flexibility, accessibility
• Disadvantages: Discomfort, challenges for those with poor internet or tech literacy
• Advantages: Potential for teacher to discuss issues with a student in a separate private call
• Disadvantages: Difficulty of identifying struggling students and aiding them unobtrusively, lack of personal interaction among students
• Advantages: More accessible to those with low tech literacy, equality of all sharing one learning environment
• Disadvantages: Students must live close enough to attend, commutes may vary, classrooms not always accessible for disabled students
• Advantages: Ease of picking up on signs a student is struggling, more personal interaction among students
• Disadvantages: May be harder for students to approach teacher privately in person to raise issues

An essay that concerns a specific problem (practical or theoretical) may be structured according to the problems-methods-solutions approach.

This is just what it sounds like: You define the problem, characterize a method or theory that may solve it, and finally analyze the problem, using this method or theory to arrive at a solution. If the problem is theoretical, the solution might be the analysis you present in the essay itself; otherwise, you might just present a proposed solution.

The tabs below show a template for this structure and an example outline for an essay about the problem of fake news.

• Introduce the problem
• Provide background
• Describe your approach to solving it
• Define the problem precisely
• Describe why it’s important
• Indicate previous approaches to the problem
• Present your new approach, and why it’s better
• Apply the new method or theory to the problem
• Indicate the solution you arrive at by doing so
• Assess (potential or actual) effectiveness of solution
• Describe the implications
• Problem: The growth of “fake news” online
• Prevalence of polarized/conspiracy-focused news sources online
• Thesis statement: Rather than attempting to stamp out online fake news through social media moderation, an effective approach to combating it must work with educational institutions to improve media literacy
• Definition: Deliberate disinformation designed to spread virally online
• Popularization of the term, growth of the phenomenon
• Previous approaches: Labeling and moderation on social media platforms
• Critique: This approach feeds conspiracies; the real solution is to improve media literacy so users can better identify fake news
• Greater emphasis should be placed on media literacy education in schools
• This allows people to assess news sources independently, rather than just being told which ones to trust
• This is a long-term solution but could be highly effective
• It would require significant organization and investment, but would equip people to judge news sources more effectively
• Rather than trying to contain the spread of fake news, we must teach the next generation not to fall for it

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Signposting means guiding the reader through your essay with language that describes or hints at the structure of what follows.  It can help you clarify your structure for yourself as well as helping your reader follow your ideas.

The essay overview

In longer essays whose body is split into multiple named sections, the introduction often ends with an overview of the rest of the essay. This gives a brief description of the main idea or argument of each section.

The overview allows the reader to immediately understand what will be covered in the essay and in what order. Though it describes what  comes later in the text, it is generally written in the present tense . The following example is from a literary analysis essay on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .

Transitions

Transition words and phrases are used throughout all good essays to link together different ideas. They help guide the reader through your text, and an essay that uses them effectively will be much easier to follow.

Various different relationships can be expressed by transition words, as shown in this example.

Because Hitler failed to respond to the British ultimatum, France and the UK declared war on Germany. Although it was an outcome the Allies had hoped to avoid, they were prepared to back up their ultimatum in order to combat the existential threat posed by the Third Reich.

Transition sentences may be included to transition between different paragraphs or sections of an essay. A good transition sentence moves the reader on to the next topic while indicating how it relates to the previous one.

… Distance learning, then, seems to improve accessibility in some ways while representing a step backwards in others.

However , considering the issue of personal interaction among students presents a different picture.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
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• False cause fallacy
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The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.

The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.

An essay isn’t just a loose collection of facts and ideas. Instead, it should be centered on an overarching argument (summarized in your thesis statement ) that every part of the essay relates to.

The way you structure your essay is crucial to presenting your argument coherently. A well-structured essay helps your reader follow the logic of your ideas and understand your overall point.

Comparisons in essays are generally structured in one of two ways:

• The alternating method, where you compare your subjects side by side according to one specific aspect at a time.
• The block method, where you cover each subject separately in its entirety.

It’s also possible to combine both methods, for example by writing a full paragraph on each of your topics and then a final paragraph contrasting the two according to a specific metric.

You should try to follow your outline as you write your essay . However, if your ideas change or it becomes clear that your structure could be better, it’s okay to depart from your essay outline . Just make sure you know why you’re doing so.

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How to Use Text Sets to Build Background Knowledge

Searching for engaging ways to build students’ background knowledge? Perhaps you need an activity to help students prepare to read a complex text, to write an essay, or to engage intelligently in a class discussion. Maybe you just want them to know a little bit about a topic before attending a presentation or lecture. Text sets might just be your new best friend. Here’s why.

What are text sets?

A text set is simply a collection of resources about a given topic. They typically include a range of media types. To make them engaging, students should have a variety of options to choose from. You may consider including…

• excerpts from books
• infographics
• political cartoons
• picture books

Teachers can compile text sets for topics students will be exploring. It may save time to collaborate with others who teach the same course. Plus, more perspectives can add depth to the text set.

How do text sets help students?

Text sets benefit students in ALL content areas. Students develop a wider understanding of a topic when they read many texts about it. And, research shows that background knowledge aids reading comprehension, critical thinking, and retention of information learned . In short, prior knowledge is a game changer!

Reading:   When students are preparing to read a complex piece, text sets can help to build their background knowledge on vocabulary, historical context, allusions, and more. Imagine students are preparing to read Romeo and Juliet. Dipping their toes in an article about mythology, information about social issues, and the poem Pyramus and Thisbe can provide them with background knowledge to recognize the allusions (like to Cupid, Echo, and Aurora), understand the relational tensions, and make connections with earlier texts on a similar theme.

Writing:   If you want students to write something, text sets help build them develop a more knowledgable voice. For instance, consider an editorial. Students will need to know about the role of the president and the issues surrounding compulsory voting in Australia (among other perspectives) before crafting their response. Text sets can be the springboard for credible research that will give them the confidence they need to write with an authoritative voice.

Discussions:   Then, there’s always speaking and listening. Often, students don’t participate in class discussions because they haven’t had time to formulate their opinions in a safe space. Text sets can help. By providing the essential question and sub-questions students will discuss, they can think through their ideas as they explore the texts. Text sets, coupled with turn and talk and informal, small group discussions, can be energizing and informative. In short, they can give students the confidence they need to speak up in a whole-class setting.

What does it look like?

Truly, text sets can be as basic or as simple as you’d like. Format them in a bulleted list, a choice board, or a virtual classroom graphic. I like to make text sets visually appealing for the added engagement benefit.

See an example below. Click here to make a copy for your Drive.

How do I create a text set?

When creating a text set, try to include texts that represent different angles of the topic. Texts sets can have one anchor text supported by a variety of sub-texts, or they could build in complexity. If you want an interest-based approach in which students choose which texts they’d like to explore, text sets can be more informally organized.

Begin by identifying the essential question you want students to explore or answer. For example, when I collaborated with another instructional coach in my district to create the above text set for social media, we debated what question would be the best for creating an open, interesting class discussion. After considering many options, we kept it simple and went with  What do you think about social media? 

This general, high-interest question allowed us to build in a variety of sub-questions students could research and discuss to prepare for a larger, summative speaking and listening discussion. Some of the sub-questions we created include:

• Is social media positive or negative?
• How does social media keep the world connected?
• What effect does social media have on human relationships?
• How does social media influence public opinion (and the press)?
• What limitations should be placed on social media and for whom?
• Would the world be a better place without social media?
• How has social media changed the way we think?
• How can social media help and hurt your ability to get a job in the future?

High-interest text sets provide multiple perspectives , sub-topics , and genre types to engage students. If you can build in options that cover a variety of text complexities , it will help to engage readers at many readiness levels.

Where do I find the texts?

Finding quality texts can be time consuming. So, it’s always helpful if you can work with others. To save you time, here are some of my starting points:

• Scholastic magazines (subscription needed)
• Library of Congress
• New York Times Text to Text
• Artwork by topic
• Political Cartoons

Should I include students?

Should you include students in the text set creation process? Absolutely! As with anything else, students love having agency in their learning. Use text sets to provide avenues for choice and voice. After students have experienced a text set you have created, invite them into the process! Tell them you need their help. It’s a great hook for promoting student-driven extension research. And, they can focus on filtering for credible sources.

How do I assign them?

If your students are used to working productively in a self-paced environment, text sets probably won’t present many issues! One of the keys to assigning text sets is making sure students know what the classroom environment should look, sound, and feel like as they work. Do you want students to take notes? record new vocabulary? work collaboratively? And, those norms are up to you…the teacher! So, define how you want students to work, talk about those expectations with your classes, and then practice until they get it.

As middle and high school teachers, one of the hardest parts about teaching is when students have huge gaps in background knowledge. No doubt, background knowledge prepares students to read complex texts, write with authority, and speak confidently. Even though they take a bit of time to compile, text sets allow for differentiation and small group teaching opportunities. Work them into learning stations, center activities, and more.

If you need a strategy to support students where they are, provide high-interest choices, and teach flexibly, text sets may be just the thing you need.

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The Importance of Background Knowledge in Understanding Text

Kathryn starke.

• August 19, 2021

What is Background Knowledge?

Background knowledge is the amount of information or knowledge someone has on a particular topic. Background knowledge is acquired by the number of experiences someone has in life or the amount of knowledge they have retained from reading or listening. Reading a variety of genres of books, listening to multiple media sources, and engaging in conversations on multiple topics only increase someone’s background knowledge. Background knowledge helps students of all ages and reading levels fully understand text. When students activate their prior knowledge, their reading comprehension grows.

Why is Background Knowledge Important?

Background knowledge is a critical component in determining a student’s success in reading comprehension. This one element can often make or break a child’s reading comprehension level. Comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading. Making connections is an important reading strategy that encourage readers to share text to self connections, text to text connections, and text to world connections. When students share their connections, through conversation, writing, or illustration, this is a strong indicator of a child’s background knowledge. Background knowledge can be most helpful in comprehending nonfiction text, which often proves to be a difficult genre for students to fully understand.

When readers have a wealth of previous life experiences or have gained information about a specific topic or content area, their reading comprehension level is automatically increased. When a student already has the background knowledge to support a full understanding of the presented text, their level of comprehension expands. These students are able to easily analyze and interpret, explain their perspective, infer and summarize the text simply because they feel more confident in the subject matter. The more information a student has on a topic, the easier it is for the student to read, recall, and understand the text. Outside of school, a child’s level of opportunity or experience often depends on their family’s routine or dynamics. In order to provide an equal playing field to support student reading success teachers, teachers should consider implementing background knowledge in every literacy lesson.

How to Implement Background Knowledge in a Literacy Lesson

When we recognize that comprehension is closely correlated to a student’s background knowledge, we should make every effort to implement background knowledge in our daily literacy lessons. The background knowledge of a setting, a historical event, an invention, or famous individual can greatly affect a child’s understanding of any given text. A student will not fully understand a historical fiction novel that takes place during World War II if they don’t have any background knowledge on the history of the war.

How can we add background knowledge to every literacy lesson? Before reading the text, ask students to make connections to find out exactly what they know about the topic. A student’s background knowledge of vocabulary words also impacts the comprehension of a text. Therefore, using a picture walk to explore vocabulary terms or asking students to supply synonyms of selected vocabulary terms also help increase background knowledge before reading.

Implementing daily independent reading time is an easy, effective way to organically increase a child’s background knowledge. Using paired texts across genres to support social students and science objectives is another way to plan lessons that allow students to active prior knowledge. If a teacher is planning a unit on ocean animals, he or she should gather both fiction and nonfiction books, poems, and songs about them. Reading a biography about an oceanographer or a mystery that takes place near the beach adds to a child’s personal vault of knowledge and inquiry-based learning. When a student can use vocabulary and facts from the nonfiction articles and books and apply them to their understanding of a fictional piece, reading comprehension increases.

Implementing background knowledge should be a creative, engaging part of a literacy lesson. Classrooms can take virtual fieldtrips and track settings on a map or globe to understand how the setting impacts the understanding of the text. A story that takes place in China is significantly different from a story that takes place in Ireland. Books take readers to many locations; the background of the location is a key story element to understand. Bringing the book to life also increases background knowledge. If the book takes place in a garden, consider creating a school garden. If the book is about sea life, consider taking a real field trip to the nearest aquarium.

If a book is about a famous musician, listen to the music. If the book is about the weather, invite a meteorologist to come speak to the class. If the book is about Peruvian food, consider making the food or eating at a Peruvian restaurant. Experiences increase reading comprehension; teachers have the opportunity to provide experiences that will result in increased comprehension for students and additional background knowledge for the future. Anything is possible.

Background knowledge is essential in a student’s ability to fully comprehend text. When we as educators understand the importance of this literacy component, we develop lessons that lead students to become stronger thinkers and life-long readers and learners.

• #BackgroundKnowledge , #UnderstandingText

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• Book Reviews

Why Background Knowledge is Crucial for Literacy

Colleen Driggs

Erica Woolway

In the new book Reading Reconsidered: A Practical Guide to Rigorous Literacy Instruction , Doug Lemov, Colleen Driggs, and Erica Woolway offer clear guidance on how to teach students to be better readers. In this excerpt, they illuminate why background knowledge is so important to reading comprehension. Lemov, Driggs, and Woolway are leaders of the Teach Like a Champion team at Uncommon Schools, where they work to design and implement teacher training and principal training programs based on the study of high-performing teachers.

Reading nonfiction poses a double challenge for most students. Comprehension of nonfiction often demands a strong base of prior knowledge, but reading nonfiction is also one of the primary ways such a base of knowledge is built. Nonfiction, in other words, both relies on and develops knowledge, and the significance of this paradox is far reaching.

So students need to read more nonfiction to be ready for college. And they will need to be able to read more of it for the gateway assessments that will get them there, not only any Common Core assessments but the redesigned SAT, which will focus intensively—even more so than in the past—on cross-disciplinary reading from the sciences, social sciences, and history, and which will include at least one excerpt from a key founding document of the United States every year. [1]

But even beyond these pragmatic arguments, success in middle and high school demands that students “read to learn.” They must glean knowledge from articles, textbooks, essays, research summaries, and the like to thrive in both social and hard sciences. And of course a broad and deep base of knowledge doesn’t just assist students in reading nonfiction texts: it makes successful readers of fiction too, just as the knowledge that students derive from reading isn’t exclusively from nonfiction. No matter how you feel about assessments like the Common Core and the SAT, this broader urgency of preparation drives their design.

So it is important not only to read plenty of nonfiction and to read it in a way that adds as efficiently as possible to a student’s knowledge base but also to read fiction in the same way. But we note a further challenge here. Students often like reading nonfiction less because it’s less engaging. We think it’s also worth reflecting on how we can help them enjoy it more, and our reflections on these challenges form the basis of this chapter.

Before we look at the connection between knowledge and reading comprehension, we should parse some terms. It’s not just nonfiction that students need more of. It’s nonnarrative nonfiction. Despite its terrible name, this term makes a critical distinction. Nonnarrative nonfiction (NNNF) is nonfiction that does not tell a story, as memoir and biography do. Rather, the main goal of NNNF is to disseminate information, as an article would, or present an argument, as an essay would. It’s the difference between reading “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X . We use the term deliberately and in place of the more common term “expository” writing because to us it encompasses a wider array of texts, many of which are growing in relevance and importance with the rise of electronic media: interviews, speeches, opinion pieces (including op-eds and columns but also blog posts and less formal writing), letters, and primary historical documents, for example.

When teachers decide to read nonfiction in class, they most often read its narrative forms, precisely because of their accessibility. Reading narrative nonfiction is important. Much of our compendium of personal favorites—to read and to teach—is made up of memoir and biography, but it is also worth noting that these are the forms of nonfiction that most closely resemble fiction and therefore are most intuitive to students already. They have been familiarized with basic narrative conventions since the earliest stories they have heard, and this familiarity is reinforced with every movie or sitcom they watch. Less familiar forms of nonfiction—ones that lack a beginning, middle, and end or an identifiable storyteller, or that employ different organizing principles, for example—pose much bigger challenges. Thus, in this chapter, we place particular emphasis on tools teachers can use to read nonfiction’s nonnarrative forms more frequently, engagingly, and successfully.

The Key Challenge: Background Knowledge

One reason why the fact that nonfiction texts both build and rely on background knowledge is so critical for teachers to consider is the tendency for its effects to compound over time. In reading, the more you know, the more you learn. Educators often refer to this as the Matthew Effect, in reference to a line in the Bible that details the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. In reading, it means that when you know a little about a topic going in, the text adds more knowledge and detail to your framework—easily and naturally deepening your understanding and building connections to existing knowledge while still leaving you enough processing capacity to be able to reflect on the nature of the ideas in the text.

This is great news if you start out with broad and deep knowledge, but less positive if you don’t. When you know very little about a topic, it’s easy to be confused or overwhelmed by new information. You can hold just a small fraction of it in your working memory, but you don’t really know enough to decide what’s most important and worth prioritizing. What you attend to is likely to be a combination of signal and noise. The new knowledge can easily become a morass of disjointed facts too daunting to prioritize or weave together in a cohesive way. Instead of comprehending an argument as a whole, you’d risk remembering a random detail here or maybe confusing two facts there. Or you’d just miss things. You might finish not much further along than you started.

Consider this sentence:

As the desert sun climbs overhead, the kangaroo rat burrows deep in the sand and rests until evening.

For a reader with the background knowledge to know that the desert sun’s “climbing” implies that it is moving toward the point where it is hottest and where that heat is deadly to mammals, there is not much of an inference to make—survival demands that the rat hide until the sun goes down. But if the reader merely knows that deserts are hot—not deadly hot—or that we are talking about the scorching midday sun, then the rat’s behavior is, if not inexplicable, at least subject to multiple interpretations. Maybe the rat is afraid. The passage loses its intended meaning. An uninformed reader is misunderstanding as much as failing to understand.

And there are even subtler knowledge requirements implied by the sentence. A reader familiar with the conventions of species naming is likely to recognize instantly (that is, in the time it takes to process it while decoding the sentence) that the kangaroo rat is a species of rat, not a creature that’s half kangaroo and half rat, and that it doesn’t look like a kangaroo. Its name is metaphorical, not literal, and given merely because it can jump far. Worse, uninformed readers are likely to suffer these misunderstandings in silence. The passage seems “obvious” to those who have the necessary knowledge, and the barriers to meaning to those who lack that knowledge are both inscrutable and often invisible, so misunderstandings are likely to endure.

Research bears this out. Cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham notes that a student’s background knowledge is among the strongest factors predicting his or her reading comprehension. As he wrote recently in his blog, “Once kids are fluent decoders, much of the difference among readers is not due to whether [they’re] a ‘good reader’ or ‘bad reader’ (meaning [they] have good or bad reading skills). Much of the difference among readers is due to how wide a range of knowledge they have. If you hand me a reading test and the text is on a subject I happen to know a bit about, I’ll do better than if it happens to be on a subject I know nothing about.” [2]

A 1988 study by Recht and Leslie is often cited as a compelling bit of proof. The researchers divided a group of young readers into two groups. One half of the readers had been shown by previous assessments to have strong reading skills—from decoding to comprehension—but they knew little about baseball. A second group comprised students with much lower reading skills, but with solid baseball knowledge. Both groups were given a passage about a baseball game to read and asked a series of comprehension questions. The result was that “weaker” readers with baseball knowledge outperformed the “good” readers without it. [3] They simply had the context to understand what was happening when, let’s say, “Roberts sacrificed Martin to second.” For them, Martin was now in scoring position, and Roberts was in the dugout. But this was not clear to their peers. As perspicacious as their reading might have been, their lack of knowledge betrayed them. What they needed to know was left unsaid.

“Every passage that you read omits information,” Willingham writes. “All of this omitted information must be brought to the text by the reader. Otherwise the passage will be puzzling, or only partly understood.” [4] And of course this is particularly obvious with passages about baseball, but it’s just as true of passages about kangaroo rats in the deserts or about life in Colonial times or even Tuck Everlasting .

Teachers often refer to the process of figuring out what’s left unsaid as making inferences . We see colleagues practicing this “skill” to help students get good at it. But no amount of inferencing practice—no amount of asking students to combine what they know with a conjecture about what they don’t—would have helped those high readers without baseball knowledge as they sought to grasp what they did not know was missing. In fact, as we will discuss in a moment, it may be that inferencing is not a skill. If it is, it is a skill that is also predicated on students having knowledge to enable it to take place.

A paper by Cunningham and Stanovich went further in studying the connection between knowledge and reading. It took results for eleventh graders on an established reading comprehension test and assessed their correlation to several measures of their general knowledge, not knowledge specific to the passages on the test as the baseball study had done. [5] There was a “remarkably high correlation between reading comprehension and the measures of cultural knowledge,” Willingham noted. [6] Correlation isn’t cause, of course—a point we make throughout this book—so it’s possible that the good readers in this second study simply knew more by the time they were tested, but given the relationship between knowledge and reading, that’s sort of the point. Whether the knowledge caused the reading comprehension or the reading comprehension caused the knowledge, or both, it is still clear that reading and knowledge are linked in important ways.

Let’s return for a moment to the idea of practicing inferencing to help students get better at it. Every text requires constant inference on the part of the reader. However, the size of the inferences students must make varies with the depth of their prior knowledge about what they are reading. This discrepancy in the size and number of inferences—a sort of regressive tax on lack of knowledge—is likely one of the key reasons that knowledge influences comprehension so deeply.

In The Knowledge Deficit, E. D. Hirsch Jr. argues that the ability to make inferences is not actually a formal skill. [7] Although this point may sound abstract, its ramifications aren’t. If making inferences isn’t a skill—that is, if practicing making inferences in one setting won’t necessarily increase the likelihood of your making successful inferences elsewhere—then repetition is of limited value. If you make inferences based in large part on your existing knowledge, making a leap might not be the problem; knowing enough to know where and how to jump might be.

Consider that even the weakest readers have no trouble making inferences about the movies and television shows they watch as part of their constant interaction with popular culture. The problem then clearly isn’t with those students’ ability to make inferences. In a familiar context, they “get” what’s unsaid. Rather, the difficulty must lie in the setting—at least in most cases: the students cannot process the text with enough cognitive bandwidth left over to make inferences, or they lack the vocabulary to follow the narrative, or they lack knowledge. They don’t know what it means to burrow or what a climbing sun implies. Yes, it could be that there are also specific cognitive processes that make inferences work differently when made from text rather than visually, but even if that were true, knowledge would almost assuredly be a significant compounding factor. So in all likelihood, making inferences requires both background knowledge and experience thinking about what’s missing from a text—in fact, we’d argue, knowing what sorts of things are often missing in a text is a sort of tacit knowledge that comes from experience. By itself though, a strategy-based approach to practicing making inferences is at least insufficient. Building background knowledge is necessary—and possibly primarily necessary—for students to make effective inferences.

Doug Lemov, Colleen Driggs, and Erica Woolway are leaders of the Teach Like a Champion team at Uncommon Schools. Connect with the authors on Twitter at @Doug_Lemov , @EricaWoolway and @ColleenDriggs .

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Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

The Whys & Hows of Activating Students’ Background Knowledge

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Our students have a great deal of background knowledge that teachers need to activate so that they can learn new content. And students need to be provided with additional background knowledge so that they can access even more content!

This two-part series will look at what we mean by the term “background knowledge,” why it’s important, and how we teachers can best identify and develop it both in the physical classroom and during remote teaching.

Today, Adam Fachler, Jeffrey Wilhelm, Rachel Bear, Cheryl Abla, Elizabeth Villanueva, Jenny Vo, and Sarah Said share their commentaries. You can listen to a 10-minute conversation I had with Jeffrey, Rachel, Cheryl, and Elizabeth on my BAM! Radio Show . You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

You might also be interested in The Best Resources for Learning About the Importance of Prior Knowledge (& How to Activate It) .

“Priming” students for success

Jeffery D. Wilhelm, Adam Fachler, and Rachel Bear are the authors of the book Planning Powerful Instruction: 7 Must-Make Moves to Transform How We Teach--and How Students Learn ":

In our book, Planning Powerful Instruction (Corwin), we argue that a central move of teaching is priming to prepare students for success. (This is much more efficient and fun than remediating learners once they have begun to struggle.) The only resources that learners have for approaching a new challenge is what they already know and are already interested in. The only way to build new interests and capacities is by activating and building on students’ prior interests and background knowledge before instruction . This process honors what students bring to the classroom and provides them with necessary context and connection to the purpose and payoff of what is to be learned. It is essential to culturally relevant pedagogy.

But the biggest reason we begin new learning experiences with activities that “prime” students for the learning ahead is this:

There is no alternative! All new learning builds on prior learning.

When we activate and build students’ background knowledge:

• Students see the connection between previous and current learning.
• We establish a set of conceptual “hooks” on which students can “hang” new learning.
• Students get on the same page with us.
• We receive formative-assessment data we can use throughout the learning experience.

Not only does this practice provide myriad benefits and accord with how the brain functions, it also describes how experts in every field develop expertise. Everyone from engineers to entrepreneurs ask themselves, “ What is already known and how do we know it—and how might we extend and build on it?” before undertaking a new project.

If the best instruction mirrors or approximates how individuals in the real world learn, then it stands to reason that we should do what they do.

So, what are the best ways to get it done? Here is a short list of our favorite techniques:

• Solving a “junior,” mini, or scaled-back version of the problem you will teach students to solve.
• Unpacking images or art related to the targeted learning (e.g., see-think-wonder protocols that mirror the process of inquiry: establishing the facts, interpreting facts and inference chains, asking questions to drive further learning).
• Providing autobiographical prompts related to the learning ahead (e.g., make students face a moral dilemma the character will face, putting them in the thematic driver’s seat).
• Asking questions that address problematic or controversial aspects of the content.
• Facilitating a simulation.
• Ranking products or concepts (which requires making value judgments and applying reasoning).
• Conducting surveys or opinionaires.

Remember: The best priming activities are accessible, focused, relevant, and revealing of students’ knowledge and abilities. If your priming activity leaves a good taste in your students’ mouths and creates energy and interest in future learning, then that positive spillover can affect the vibe of the whole unit. So, while we know time is of the essence in every classroom, it’s a necessary investment to make priming student learning a mainstay of yours.

Background knowledge and curiosity

Cheryl Abla is a former teacher who now, with McREL International, leads professional learning and coaching for K-12 educators on research-based strategies for effective instruction, use of classroom technology, English-language acquisition, and classroom culture and climate. She’s a co-author of Tools for Classroom Instruction That Works , which provides easy-to-use tools and learning activities to help teachers get CITW strategies into the classroom on a daily basis :

At McREL, we’re huge believers in the power of curiosity to propel lifelong learning, but we’re not naïve about its limitations. Without background knowledge, what would students have to be curious about? You’ve got to start somewhere. Learning is about filling in the gaps between what is known and what isn’t yet known.

The best way to leverage background knowledge is to give students cues, questions, and advance organizers about what they’re about to learn. Sound familiar? Together, these tools form one of the nine classic research-based strategies from Classroom Instruction That Works . What cues, questions, and advance organizers have in common is that they’re about beginnings. They all precede the delivery of new content and they all rely on the understanding that knowledge doesn’t exist in a vacuum but builds upon prior knowledge and in turn gets built upon.

Vocabulary Knowledge Rating , which we adapted from Camille Blachowicz, introduces students to critical vocabulary terms before instruction begins. Students rate their understanding of each term before and after the lesson, to see if their knowledge has grown.

Anticipation Guide reverses the traditional model of learning enough about a subject to then be able to form an opinion about it. First, students are asked their opinion of a subject. Then the lesson is delivered. Was their background knowledge adequate to support their original position, or do they need to re-evaluate? Now they’re not only learning new content, they’re learning how additional evidence can influence their understanding.

Power Previewing teaches students to skim a text strategically. The teacher guides the previewing process by pointing out useful things to look for, such as recurring themes. There are many questions a teacher can include in an advance organizer, and one of them is, “Does anything look familiar or relate to something you’ve seen, read, learned about, or experienced?” Students become more proficient readers when memory is activated as part of the process of acquiring new knowledge.

While none of us wants schools to be curiosity-free drill-and-kill zones ever again, we have to acknowledge the importance of background knowledge and develop skill in helping students acquire it. Background knowledge plus curiosity is the most powerful formula of all.

“Funds of knowledge”

Elizabeth Villanueva is a Spanish teacher and world-language department chair at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, Calif. She has been recognized as the 2018 National Education Association Social Justice Activist Award Finalist; 2018 California Teachers Association, César Chávez “Sí Se Puede Human Rights Award"; and Sacramento City Unified school district, Teacher of the Year 2015-16. Elizabeth is an Ed.D. candidate at the University of San Francisco in the Learning and Instruction Doctoral Program with an emphasis in heritage-language maintenance:

Academic learning success must be founded at the personal level of each learner and teacher. Its relevance brings meaningfulness and connectedness to each individual creating a learning atmosphere of interconnectedness that stimulates curiosity for the known and unknown. That bridges to a deeper level of understanding to explore and discover the purpose for academic access and success. Therefore, the power of disseminating the funds of knowledge of each learner to develop self-determination for personal growth and academic success is correlated with the teacher’s willingness to share their own personal funds of knowledge that may trigger students’ interest and motivation to thrive.

I come from a family that can be labeled as “dysfunctional,” since there was domestic violence, lack of love, low economic status, and then at an early age, my parents separated. It was then my mother left my father and migrated illegally to Salinas, Calif., looking for better life opportunities. It was she who, after crossing the border, began telling me and my siblings to get an education to have more and better life opportunities because being uneducated, she was only able to work in the fields and then at a packing company. So five years after her arrival to Salinas, I came to Salinas knowing her expectations. Those were to finish high school, learn English, get some educational degree, and find a better job than she had. It was her insistence to apply myself to study that made me realize how important it is to go to school and most importantly the role that teachers play in a child’s education.

Teaching promotes and advocates for social, cultural, linguistic, and economic consciousness for change in the human race. As a teacher, I can’t leave behind my personal story and just focus on teaching the subject content and standards. A lot of the students that I work with have similar stories to my own. They come from low-income families whose hopes and dreams are uncertain or may not even exist because of their social, economic, linguistic, and legal status. Utilizing my personal story and funds of knowledge, not only as a Spanish teacher but as a learner, too, has become a crucial teaching and learning tool to activate and build my own students’ background knowledge or what some call “funds of knowledge.”

As a language teacher and an English-language learner, I believe there is no language more powerful than the language of empathy, sensitivity, and kindness for one another. I know that if I take care of my students’ educational well-being by valuing and integrating their funds of knowledge, it is transformed into meaningful and relevant instructional material that becomes students’ academic success. Building that relatedness can enhance students’ competence to develop their autonomy to continue thriving. Thus, learning from the funds of knowledge of my students is my motivation to strive and enhance meaningful relationships that empower a bigger community.

ELLs & prior knowledge

Jenny Vo earned her B.A. in English from Rice University and her M.Ed. in educational leadership from Lamar University. She has worked with English-learners during all of her 23 years in education and is currently an ESL ISST in Katy ISD in Katy, Texas:

Our English-learners come to us from many countries and bring with them different backgrounds and experiences. In order to successfully support their learning in the content areas, we need to make sure we find out what they already know and what gaps need to be filled. We can do this by activating the students’ prior knowledge and then building their background knowledge.

What is prior knowledge and why do we need to activate it? Prior knowledge is what the students bring with them that they have gained from previous schooling and their life experiences. It is important for teachers to activate their students’ prior knowledge so they know what students already know about a certain topic and what gaps in learning they will need to fill in order for students to be successful. It helps them to understand the reason why the students are struggling. Is the poor comprehension or struggle with assignments due to lack of language, lack of experience, or lack of skills? Having a firm grasp on the reason or reasons will enable the teacher to know how to support the students.

I like using anticipation guides at the beginning of a unit to see what students know. Anticipation guides have statements that students answer at the beginning of a unit and then at the end. The responses can be in an Agree/Disagree or True/False format. KWL (Know-Want to Know-Learn) charts are also great for activating prior knowledge. Charts can be filled out as a class or by individual students. Another great strategy is the observation chart. This GLAD strategy has students walking around the room looking at pictures and writing observations, comments, and questions on them. I either give each student a different colored pen or have them write their name after their observation so I can track which student wrote what.

Once you have a grasp of your students’ prior knowledge, your next step is to build their background knowledge to fill in the gaps. Building background knowledge allows you as the teacher to link the students’ past learning and experiences to new learning. There are many ways to build background knowledge. Videos are great for this. Choose ones that are not too technical and easy to understand. Stop periodically to check for understanding. Virtual field trips are a great alternative to live field trips when you are unable to schedule them. I like virtual field trips because you can keep going back to them if needed. The most important way teachers can build background knowledge is to explicitly teach key academic vocabulary. Give students multiple opportunities to use and practice the vocabulary so that the words are internalized and permanently connected to the topic of study.

As you can see, it is essential for you to plan activities to activate your students’ prior knowledge and to build background knowledge so that your students, especially your English-learners, can make that critical connection between their past learning and their new learning. With the info gained from the activities, you can better plan how to support your students so they are successful in their learning.

“Language dives”

Sarah Said is the director of language and equity programs at an EL (Expeditionary Learning) Education School in the Chicago suburbs. In her role, she oversees support programs for multilingual learners, works with others to create a community that fosters success for students from the diverse communities her school serves, and helps strengthen school to community outreach. In the past, she has been a director of ELL, dean, and curriculum coordinator. In addition to her role in her building, she is a contributor for ELL Confianza and has written a variety of blog posts online. She is a member of the #ELLChat and #ELLchat_bkClub where she helps advocate for multilingual learners. Follow her on Twitter at @MrsSaid:

As I always say, “We don’t eat something in a restaurant when we don’t understand what it is on the menu"—at least I don’t. Our minds are “picky eaters” when it comes to what we engage in and connect with. Be able to front-load information and support students with connecting to past knowledge is something we need to do to support them as educators. How do we do this? We engage students in activities that help us learn about them. This helps support us in being culturally responsive teachers in the classroom.

One strategy that I like to use at the beginning of the year is a project that I call the “cultural bag.” I explain to students that their cultural bag is something that they always carry around with them that holds their values, norms, and experiences. What I like about this activity is that it can be done with any age level from K-12 and be effective. Simply, you give students a paper bag, explain what a “cultural bag " is with an age-appropriate explanation, then they can collage or draw the bag with effective images to emulate the “cultural bag.” Depending on the age level of the students, you can have them then either write or explain what the images on the bag mean.

As you continue to get to know your students during the year, you can use ideas from what you know about them to scaffold conversations about new content. This helps students learn, and it makes the classroom more engaging for all.

When you are considering multilingual learners, you need to think about other ways to build background knowledge. You may need to utilize cognates in the native language to support students’ understanding vocabulary in English. This can be supported in an interactive word wall. These word walls are not just word walls that sit on a wall; students actually create the word wall and utilize the word wall to actively support it.

Another great way to build background knowledge for multilingual learners is to utilize the strategy of a language dive . Working in an EL (Expeditionary Learning) School, we utilize language dives to deconstruct, reconstruct, and practice language using the EL education ELA curriculum. Students can use existing language that they know to help develop their understanding a sentence and text. They can then continue to use the knowledge of the structures they learned to practice writing.

Building background for students helps support them in really engaging with and grasping content and language. This is an essential part of teaching and learning. It is critical in supporting a culturally responsive classroom.

Thanks to Adam, Jeffrey, Rachel, Cheryl, Elizabeth, Jenny, and Sarah for their contributions!

(This is the first post in a two-part series.)

The new question-of-the-week is:

What are the best ways to activate and build students’ background knowledge, and why is it important?

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, personal background essay examples.

Hey everyone! I'm working on my college applications, and part of it requires a personal background essay. I'm a little stuck, so if you guys could share some examples or tips, that'd be great! Please help me out, thanks!

Hello! It's understandable that writing a personal background essay can be challenging. Here are some tips to get you started and an example of how you might approach this essay:

1. Reflect on what makes your background unique. Consider your family's history, culture, traditions, values, and how these have shaped your experiences.

2. Delve into the details. Discuss specific experiences, anecdotes, or events that have had a significant impact on your life and highlight the lessons you've gained from your background.

3. Be authentic. Write from the heart and let your personality shine through. This essay is your opportunity to help the admissions officers get to know you beyond your stats and accomplishments.

4. Avoid clichés. Personal background essays are quite common, so if you're writing about a widely-covered topic (moving, learning a new language, etc.), try to find a unique angle or aspect that will set your essay apart.

Growing up in a multigenerational household, I've had the rare privilege of experiencing diverse perspectives on life from my grandparents, parents, and siblings. My grandparents, who emigrated from Vietnam, taught me the importance of staying true to our cultural heritage and maintaining strong connections with family. Daily rituals like preparing and enjoying traditional Vietnamese meals, participating in Lunar New Year celebrations, and listening to stories about my grandparents' journey to the United States helped me appreciate the strength and resilience of my ancestors.

However, this cultural pride was not always something I cherished. As a child, I was bullied for my Banh Khot and Banh Mi lunches, and I'd often ask my parents to pack more generic-looking sandwiches to avoid feeling like an outsider at school. It wasn't until my grandmother shared her own story of assimilation and how she strived to maintain her cultural identity in a new country that I realized the value of embracing my heritage. Inspired by her courage, I decided to educate my peers about Vietnamese traditions and founded a cultural exchange club at school. Together, we explored our heritages, organizing potlucks, cultural presentations, and language exchange sessions.

Through this experience, I've learned that embracing who I am and the unique background I come from has made me a stronger person. My personal background has taught me to be open to learning about other cultures, which I look forward to bringing to my future college community.

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English Learning

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Initial Thoughts

Perspectives & resources, what do teachers need to know about students who are learning to speak english.

• Page 1: English Language Learners
• Page 2: Second Language Acquisition
• Page 3: Programs and Personnel
• Page 4: Sheltered Instruction
• Page 5: Contextual Supports

What are some general instructional practices that can be beneficial to students who are learning to speak English?

Page 6: activate background knowledge.

• Page 7: Teach Vocabulary
• Page 8: Teach Comprehension Strategies
• Page 9: Differentiate Instruction
• Page 10: Provide Opportunities for Students To Practice

What should teachers consider when testing students who are learning to speak English?

• Page 11: Measure Performance
• Page 12: References & Additional Resources
• Page 13: Credits

Activating background knowledge can:

• Make learning easier and more meaningful
• Stimulate interest in the subject matter
• Boost motivation

Teachers can connect new concepts to students’ prior experiences and previous learning by:

• Asking students to brainstorm about what they already know about a topic
• Making explicit connections between previously learned concepts and new ones
• Using graphic organizers and other visuals to show the connections between students’ prior experiences and new knowledge
• Developing learning activities that are relevant to students’ cultural experiences
• Asking students to think about and write down what they know about a new topic and then share their ideas with a partner
• Teaching new vocabulary words by making connections to students’ background knowledge

Example: Ms. Westerman, a sixth-grade science teacher, and her colleague, the bilingual education teacher, know that Chandra grew up near a river valley. Whether in science class or in the bilingual education class both teachers tap into Chandra’s background knowledge to help her learn new vocabulary words. For example, Chandra does not know the word tributary , but she knows first-hand that smaller rivers or streams flow into larger ones. Ms. Westerman uses a map to show Chandra how the rivers flow near her previous home to illustrate the meaning of tributary . She uses Chandra’s experiences to help other students in the class increase their understanding of the science lesson.