COLUMN: Think Again – Content knowledge improves reading skills

If students don’t learn how to read in school, not much else is going to matter.

It’s a harsh statement, but a true one. Any student who leaves school without the ability to read effectively will struggle to get ahead in virtually all aspects of life.

That’s because reading is a foundational skill. Whether you want to learn how to fix a car engine, order a meal in a restaurant, or write a report for your boss, you need to be able to read.

Unfortunately, in their eagerness to teach reading skills, many educators made a critical mistake: They assumed that reading was a transferable skill. Entire reading programs were established that treated reading as a skill that worked independent of any specific content.

The so-called “three-cueing” approach to reading instruction, often called whole language, was a prime example of this mistaken assumption. Students were encouraged to guess the meaning of words based on the immediate context.

The recent Supporting the Right to Read report from the Manitoba Human Rights Commission correctly pointed out that this failed approach made it harder for students to become fluent readers. A similar report from the Ontario Human Rights Commission came to the same conclusion.

Along with having to endure poor reading instruction methods, students also had to complete endless worksheets about nebulous concepts such as “finding the main idea” and “making connections.” Not only were these worksheets mind-numbingly boring, but they did little, if anything, to help students develop any useful skills.

Importantly, reading comprehension is closely tied to background knowledge. Simply put, the more you already know about a topic, the more likely it is that you will be able to read and understand an article or book about that topic.

Consider, for example, the following sentence: “The players did the best they could to kill the penalty after their team captain received a two-minute penalty for high-sticking.”

Chances are that unless you know something about hockey, you’ll struggle to understand the sentence. Specifically, readers need specific knowledge about hockey to understand what “kill a penalty” and “high-sticking” mean. Even if you can successfully define each word, the sentence itself won’t make much sense unless you know the rules of hockey.

A recent article in Education Next by cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham and Core Knowledge Foundation chair E.D. Hirsch, Jr. summarizes the evidence showing a direct link between background knowledge and reading comprehension. Simply put, the evidence is overwhelming.

Many research studies over the years compared the reading comprehension skills of students with background knowledge about the topic of an article with those who lack that knowledge. Simply put, students with background knowledge are far more likely to understand the article than those without it.

Willingham and Hirsch also argue that it’s essential for students to develop a common base of shared knowledge. While it might be fun to dabble in esoteric and specialized subfields, there are many things that everyone needs to know in common.

In Canada, this means, among other things, having a basic understanding of parliamentary democracy and of the key events that led to the formation of our country. It’s also important to understand basic scientific principles and to be familiar with classic literary genres.

One of the most important things we can do is ensure that provincial curriculum guides take a knowledge-rich approach. Instead of expecting teachers to always create their own material, curriculum guides must be heavy on subject-specific content so that all students develop a common base of knowledge.

Everyone wants students to become strong readers. It’s about time that we started using evidence-based approaches to ensure this happens.

Michael Zwaagstra is a teacher and deputy mayor of Steinbach. He can be reached at mzwaagstra@shaw.ca.