In their most recent edWebinar, Dr. Taylar Wenzel and Dr. Analexis Kennedy explore the role of knowledge building, small groups, and deliberate practice in fostering independent learning. Students are empowered and become self-reliant when educators focus content delivery on strategically selected text and intentional feedback.
Each student approaches a text with their own array of experiences and background knowledge that influences their understanding. Appreciating the fact that learning includes a variety of domain, cultural, and affective knowledge, educators can help students understand the emotional and societal contexts of their reading. And when educators emphasize meaningful discourse and writing to refine ideas and clarify understanding, learners synthesize complex ideas while becoming ever more independent.
The ultimate goal is to guide students toward independence, enabling them to expand their own knowledge without constant teacher intervention.
Understanding the Differences Between Background Knowledge and Knowledge Building
Knowledge building is the process of deliberately expanding and connecting knowledge over time.
–Analexis Kennedy
Background knowledge is what a student already knows at a given moment. In contrast, knowledge building is the active process of acquiring and connecting new information.
Background knowledge is highly individual. Every reader brings a unique set of facts, procedural skills, or episodic events to a text. Background knowledge is the starting point for each reader’s learning experience.
Key Differences
State vs. Process
- Background knowledge is the existing information a student has acquired. Knowledge building is the metacognitive process used to grow that information.
Static vs. Generative
- Background knowledge can sometimes be limited to specific facts (domain knowledge). However, the knowledge-building process is meant to be generative. This means the strategies students use to build knowledge in one text can be transferred to the next.
Deepening Comprehension by Integrating Multiple Types of Knowledge
Knowledge building is not limited to facts or domain-specific content.
Effective instruction incorporates:
- Domain knowledge: subject-specific
- Cultural knowledge: understanding characteristics and time periods
- Affective knowledge: understanding feelings and motivations
Different types of knowledge impact student comprehension by providing the necessary context and emotional framework for students to understand, synthesize, and connect ideas within a text. Rather than just focusing on facts, integrating these knowledge types allows students to move beyond surface-level content to a more holistic understanding of what they’re reading.
Domain Knowledge
Domain knowledge refers to information specific to a particular discipline, content area, or technical subject. It is often what people traditionally associate with the term knowledge, encompassing facts, procedural skills, and episodic events. While domain knowledge is crucial for understanding a topic, it should be integrated with cultural and affective knowledge.
Cultural Knowledge
Cultural knowledge involves understanding the characteristics and time periods that shape a story or information. It helps students understand why events are occurring by grounding them in a specific era. For example, the Colorado Gold Rush in the late 1800s. An understanding of this event provides the necessary context for why people were mine owners or workers and why they migrated to that area.
Students don’t necessarily need this knowledge before reading. Rather, the process of building cultural knowledge while reading allows them to understand what’s being portrayed. This supports their development as independent learners.
Affective Knowledge
Affective knowledge focuses on the feelings, motivations, and impacts of the people or characters being studied. It allows readers to look past what happened and explore the why, or the human element. Fore example, why miners might go on strike or how a specific event impacts a character’s perspective.
Building affective knowledge helps students develop an expressive vocabulary. This precision allows them to more accurately describe feelings and motivations in their writing and academic discourse, further clarifying their understanding of the text.
By considering domain, cultural, and affective knowledge together, students are better equipped to synthesize content and construct meaning in new ways.
Transferring the Heavy Lifting From Educators to Students
Educators set the conditions for learning by minimizing teacher talk and avoiding overly long introductions that give away a text’s content. By reducing the “warm-up” and focusing on the “workout”—the time students spend actually interacting with the text—teachers allow students to do the cognitive work of building their own knowledge.
Limiting the Warm-Up
- Ensuring the introduction and background building don’t take up more time than students spend actively reading and practicing the process in the text.
Using Inquiry-Based Prompts
- Utilizing open-ended question prompts and cues that encourage students to internalize the thinking process so they eventually ask these questions of themselves.
By framing instruction through a learner lens, teachers move away from being the source of all information. Instead, they become facilitators who equip students to expand and connect their own knowledge over time.
The central guideline is to provide just enough support to give students access to the text while prioritizing the time they spend building their own knowledge independently.
Leveraging Small Groups for Feedback and Independence
Small-group instruction should be data-driven and skill-focused, prioritizing the process of building knowledge over merely mastering specific content. This setting positions the teacher as a coach who assists students on how to make strategic decisions as readers rather than just correcting them for accuracy.
Small-group instruction fosters student independence and feedback by creating a high-impact environment where teachers can provide real-time coaching while shifting cognitive responsibility to the learner.
Focusing on Process Over Content
To foster independence, small-group instruction shifts the focus from mastering specific content (the what) to mastering the metacognitive process (the how). This ensures that the skills students practice—such as using inquiry or identifying themes—are generative and transferable to other texts they encounter outside of the small-group setting. The goal is to make the transfer to independence explicit. This way students realize they’re at the table to practice being a reader. They are not there just to comply with a specific assignment.
Writing and Discourse Facilitate Independent Learning
The more we talk about what we think we know, or we think we just read about, the more we’re refining our ideas.
—Taylar Wenzel
Deliberate practice should include meaningful discourse and writing to deepen thinking. Academic discourse helps students refine their ideas and clarify their understanding through evidence-based discussion with peers.
Writing should be more than an afterthought or a way to check for compliance. It should be used to help students organize information and construct meaning.
Writing helps students gain ownership and agency over their learning by:
Constructing New Meaning
- The act of putting ideas into words forces students to synthesize what they’ve just read. This moves the student beyond merely writing down facts or information to actively building and organizing new concepts.
Encouraging Deeper Exploration
- To write about a topic, students must be clear on what they know and what information they intend to share. This requirement for clarity leads to a deeper exploration of the text and helps students expand on their existing knowledge.
Refining Expressive Vocabulary
- Writing provides an opportunity for students to use and refine expressive vocabulary. This leads to greater precision in language when describing domain-specific knowledge or affective knowledge. For instance, the feelings and motivations of characters.
Promoting Reciprocity with Discourse
- Writing works in tandem with meaningful discourse. If a student can talk about a topic using evidence from the text, they’re better prepared to write about it,. This further clarifies their communication of the content across different contexts.
About the Authors
Dr. Taylar Wenzel is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Teacher Education at the University of Central Florida (UCF). She is the founder and Co-director of the UCF Reading Clinic and the Director of the UCF Downtown Saturday Reading Camp, both of which offer acceleration opportunities to serve K-6 students in the Central Florida area and clinical field experiences for participating teacher candidates. Dr. Wenzel is the faculty lead for several community-partnership, use-inspired research projects, including STE’s Read2Succeed Partnership, the Knights Read Community Bus, and the City Year Teaching Fellowship. She has been a recipient of the University Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award and multiple Teaching Incentive Program Awards at the college level. She is the co-author of Small Groups for Big Readers: 10 Questions Answered About Core Reading Instruction in the K-5 Classroom.
Dr. Analexis Kennedy is a Lecturer of Reading in the College of Community Innovation and Education at the University of Central Florida (UCF). She spent 15 years working with K-12 students, teachers, and administrators. Her roles in K-12 included classroom teacher, literacy coach, district reading specialist, and a professional development coordinator supporting teachers and coaches across the state of Florida. She joined the teaching faculty in 2015. Her research focuses on literacy, literacy coaching, professional learning, and adult learning. Since joining teaching faculty, she has served as the Faculty Chair for the KnightED Talks Professional Learning Workshops that serve to work with district and university partners to complement and enhance the content from their teacher candidate program of study. She is the co-author of Small Groups for Big Readers: 10 Questions Answered About Core Reading Instruction in the K-5 Classroom.
Related:
Scaffolding for Reading Independence: Effective Strategies
Why Sufficient, Deliberate Practice Is a Critical Element of Literacy Learning and Retention
The Role of Knowledge Building in K-5 Literacy
Actionable ideas for creating classrooms where curiosity thrives and students become confident, independent thinkers.