How to Help Students Build Knowledge for Reading Comprehension

What the Research Says

In our kick-off article about teaching reading comprehension, we discussed how language comprehension is one of the main strands in Dr. Hollis Scarborough’s groundbreaking Reading Rope, a model that shows the components necessary for skilled reading. While language comprehension can occur even while a child learns to decode, reading comprehension happens when the child can understand written text. 

In Dr. Scarborough’s Handbook of Early Literacy Research, she states:

“Even if the pronunciation of all letter strings in a passage are correctly decoded, the text will not be well comprehended if the child (…) lacks critical background knowledge or inferential skills to interpret the text appropriately and ‘read between the lines.’”¹

Knowing how crucial background knowledge is to reading comprehension, how can we help students build knowledge through reading in our reading intervention and tutoring endeavors? 

Why Knowledge-Building Should Be a Part of Reading Intervention

Many schools that have shifted to structured literacy instruction have adopted knowledge-building curricula, with texts organized in units by theme. This is important because reading widely and deeply on a topic helps students build a strong knowledge base. It also ensures that everyone in a school or district builds knowledge around the same topics together as they progress through grade levels. Without a strong centralized curriculum, students in different schools and classrooms may be learning about different topics, leaving the knowledge they build to chance. 

Knowledge-building work can and should happen during reading intervention time as well. Although most students with Hoot Reading are working on phonics, part of every tutoring lesson is dedicated to building language comprehension, including knowledge-building. This is particularly important for students learning English as an additional language or for students who may have moved frequently and didn’t have access to a school curriculum that prioritized knowledge-building. 

Hoot Reading’s Approach to Knowledge-Building

At Hoot, we’ve named our knowledge-related instructional focus “Text-Specific Knowledge.” Our tutors use the extensive collection of fiction and non-fiction texts in the Hoot Library to help students draw important knowledge from the books they read together.

Tutors use targeted questions and prompts throughout the lesson to discuss the topic and enable deeper comprehension.  The pages above are from the book “Travel to Australia” by our partners at Lerner Publishing. At the beginning of this chapter, students will learn about the geography of Australia from the text and engaging text features. 

A Hoot tutor will: 

Assess and activate prior knowledge

The student may have some background knowledge, but the tutor will not assume they know anything about Australia. For example, before reading the text, the tutor may ask, “What do you know about Australia? Do you know where it is or what it looks like?’


Point out key vocabulary words or support the student with explicit knowledge

For example, the word “island” is defined right in the text, but “continent” and “country” are not. These words appear a bit similar, so it will be important for the teacher to define them clearly if the student doesn’t already know these concepts. The word “coast” is also used multiple times, so ensuring that students have a precise understanding of “coast” and “coastline” is key for using these two pages to build knowledge of Australia’s geography. 


Prompt the student to compare and contrast their prior knowledge with the new information from the text after they have read a portion of the text

They can ask, “What did you learn for the first time about Australia?” ”Was there anything you may have learned before that you remembered or reviewed today?” 

Throughout a tutoring cycle, the tutor and student will revisit and reinforce existing knowledge, mentally mapping concepts and how they connect. With each text they read, the map expands and creates new links that help the student build deep, lasting knowledge.

Stay tuned as we continue our series on reading comprehension skills. Next, we will explore how Hoot teaches text structure!

Interested in how Hoot Reading provides full-spectrum structured literacy tutoring? Contact us to find out more. 

Sources

¹ Scarborough, H. S. (2001). Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. In S. B. Neuman & D. K. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook of early literacy research, Vol. 1, 97–110. Guilford Press.