Building and Sharing Knowledge Key Practice: What Do You Know, What Don't You Know, What Did You Learn?

Abstract

In this paper we provide the rationale and foundation for the building and sharing knowledge key practice for the CBAL™ English language arts competency model. Building and sharing knowledge is a foundational literacy activity that enables students to learn and communicate what they read in texts. It is a strategic process that involves the integration of five key components or phases. Before reading, students activate their relevant background knowledge to help set learning goals, identify relevant information, and ask guiding questions that set the context for learning. During reading, students understand the text by using a host of strategies to construct a coherent mental model of the text content that is consistent with their background knowledge. Students clarify meanings of unknown words and concepts as they engage in metacognitive and self‐regulated learning. After reading, students consolidate what they have read by using a variety of reading strategies that strengthen the representation in long‐term memory. Finally, students convey what they have read in writing, speaking, or other representational formats to reflect communication goals and the intended audience. Collectively, the building and sharing knowledge key practice is intended to both model skilled performance and help identify component skill weakness. In this paper we outline the major features of the key practice as well as address potential advantages and challenges of the approach.