EDRG 604 Blog #5
The background knowledge that readers bring to the text they are reading helps them interpret the text, make connections to the text and ultimately, influences their comprehension of the text. This is an important factor (in addition to language development) that teachers of students learning English as a second language must consider. Let’s just take a look at a few common children’s books and see what kinds of background knowledge and cultural influences might affect comprehension. Then, let us consider ways to enhance that understanding.
The first book I will be looking at is a popular Dr. Seuss book entitled, The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. This book occurs on a snowy day. The setting begins in the snow. The kids are shoveling snow. The cat arrives wearing skis. Consider that you are a teacher of students from Cambodia, El Salvador, Vietnam and Mexico. They live in California in an urban environment and they have never seen snow. What could you do as a teacher to help them increase their experience and background knowledge in order to relate to this? One idea is to rent a snow machine…no, forget that, it is far too expensive. Well, the next best thing to a real experience is pictures. You could show a movie or clips from U-tube showing people shoveling snow and skiing. You could bring in physical objects like skis and shovels. The children could do actions like lifting up the shovels to feel how heavy they are. This would help them understand how difficult the task the children are doing is. This might also help them understand why the mess the cat is making is such a problem. They could try on skis. This would not only provide a visual, but a memorable experience. Virtual snow is now available inexpensively at places like Lakeshore (the learning store). In addition, children who have lived in the snow or visited it could talk about their experiences. When we can’t experience something directly, hearing about another’s experience does create some background knowledge even if it isn’t as powerful as one’s own experience. After these activities that you’ve created as an instructor, you’ve affectively increased the language learner’s experiences. This increases comprehension. The reader can now relate more than ever to the situation in the book.
Another concept (& vocabulary word) that may be unfamiliar to an English language learner is the idea of stains. Everyone has them, but maybe they haven’t talked about them. This becomes a big issue in the story when the cat gets a pink stain on mother’s dress. The teacher could show a stain on her clothing and talk about conventional ways to remove it. The class could even have a stain day in which they wore their favorite stained clothing! Or, a science experiment could be created to find the best way to get out a particular stain (Say, of punch or coffee). This would create a great opportunity for comprehensible output. This would help commit the concept to memory!
The next book we will examine is Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. Almost every kindergarten or first grade class I’ve visited has read this book at one time or another. One concept which might be challenging for language learners is that “wild” has two meanings. It could mean untamed or it could be to act crazy. Max’s mother calls him “wild” and then he threatens to eat her like a real wild animal. This results in his punishment of being sent to his room without dinner. Suddenly, his room really goes wild. It grows grass and becomes a forest on the edge of an ocean. One thing an instructor could do is to create a Venn Diagram with wild “untamed” on one side and wild “crazy” on the other and list and discuss the differences and similarities. In a similar way, contrasting a “tamed” animal and an “untamed” animal would be good to clarify the concept of “tame.“ This word is used when Max tames the wild things towards the end of the story. This would be best after reading the book because the book itself creates some background knowledge on the topic. A sophisticated teacher might even investigate which animals are tamed in their students’ countries of origin and then discuss what they are like tame and wild.
In the book it says, “Let the wild rumpus start!” when the wild things (monsters) come out. The concept and vocabulary word “rumpus” would be foreign to language learners (as well as most of the class). Through the illustrations of the book and physically acting out a rumpus, the concept would be understood. I’ve seen this worked out in a first grade class. They actually made masks with glow in the dark paint on paper bags and then, to some teacher-selected music danced in the dark! This book is fairly simple and many children can relate to it because they have all misbehaved and been disciplined at some time. None-the-less, discussing what their parents do when they misbehave would help the children make text-to-self connections. It would also be a good scaffold for a journal entry. A prompt could be provided such as: “When I misbehave…..“ or “When I am wild, my parents….”
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