 So why is building background knowledge important for ELLs? Background knowledge is that knowledge that we all have that stems from our previous experiences. It shapes who we are, what we know, and how we perceive the world. To show you how your background knowledge comes into play, try to fill in the gaps in this passage. Here are the answers. You can see how background knowledge affects how you were trying to make meaning of that passage. So you used what you knew to try to fill in the blanks. Building on students' prior knowledge is essential for all students, not just English language learners. For ELLs, however, building or activating their background knowledge is too pronged. It's a cognitive task, as it is for all students, but it's also a cultural task. Cognitively, we know that new language is organized and retained when it is linked to prior schema. Culturally, ELLs are affected because they may not have the necessary background knowledge, cultural knowledge, to understand an English text. This is especially true in social studies and language arts. Social studies requires knowledge of politics, geography, and history, and texts in language arts are often culturally based. This is supported by the research. Activating or building on background knowledge is vitally important for comprehension and is an important consideration when working with English language learners. Here's an example of how cultural knowledge is needed to understand this text. The excerpt is called The Big Party. It was the day of the big party. Mary wondered if Johnny would like a kite. She ran to her bedroom, picked up her piggy bank, and shook it. There was no sound. If you read over the questions underneath, the first three questions can be answered by searching the text. And if you know basic English vocabulary like kite and piggy bank and verb tense. The next four questions, however, what kind of party is it? Are Mary and Johnny adults or children? Why did Mary shake her piggy bank and what is Mary's problem? Requires knowledge about a North American birthday party. The questions can't be answered without this specific cultural information. An English speaker, however, would not have a problem understanding this and making inferences about what this party is about. Research was done with 52 ESL students and they were asked to read texts that were culturally familiar to their background. They found that the students who read stories that were about their own culture were better able to comprehend and remember the text. This should come as no surprise. It makes sense. However, how often do we expect ELLs to understand and read something that they know very little about? This was apparent to me a few years ago when I was working with a young girl from India and she read a story about camping and a family and their dog went camping. There was a skunk in the campground and the skunk sprayed the dog at the end of the story. However, the story didn't directly tell us that. We just know because the dog had to sleep outside that night. You had to infer that the skunk sprayed the dog. This young girl was able to answer all of the literal questions about this passage but when I asked her if the dog had known about skunks she looked at me blankly. It turns out that there are not skunks in India and in fact she had very little experience with camping but she said she'd heard about it. It's a good reminder that when ELLs struggle with schoolwork teachers should be aware that the problem may be related to background knowledge rather than to intellectual ability. When planning any lesson, look at the material or the text from the perspective of your English language learner and consider the background knowledge necessary to understand the content. You can stop and discuss now if you'd like about when background knowledge has affected an ELL student in your class or your teaching recently. The flip side of seeing ELLs as lacking in background knowledge is that they also have a rich source of many things that we might not know very little about. They might have knowledge about rice paddies in China, farming in rural Somalia or weaving baskets in Kenya. This is called funds of knowledge, the historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills. So try to find out from your students what it is that they know that they could share with the rest of the class. In a reading group that I was in, a little boy who was a Canadian born ELL, but his parents were from China, knew about rice paddies in the story that they were reading and he was able to be the expert and share that with his peers. Tapping into funds of knowledge is an excellent way to build those homeschool relationships and to let the student be the expert about something that they know. There are many ways to activate or build background knowledge which I'm sure you're using already in your classroom. Some examples include a think pad or collecting my thoughts. I would put your ELL students together with proficient speakers of English to brainstorm everything they know about a topic before studying it. The KWL which has been around for many years and it's a helpful resource for activating that background knowledge. We have many online tools now so we could take our student and show them a video about skunks and camping before reading a passage about those things. An anticipation guide is there's an example of one. You make statements that are true and false about something being studied. Students decide if they think it's true or false and then they feel motivated to read to find out if they were right. A semantic map where again kids brainstorm everything they know about something. A field trip or a demonstration is an excellent way to activate background knowledge because everybody is on the same playing field with that experience. Thank you.