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MSD of Steuben County webinar tells parents: build students' background knowledge to boost reading
Summary
MSD of Steuben County hosted a parent webinar on building background knowledge to improve reading comprehension. District officials and a Purdue Extension educator outlined classroom practices, home strategies and local resources including Lexia, Discovery Education virtual field trips, the Indiana Learning Lab and 4‑H programs.
Jonathan Winslow, Director of Elementary Education for MSD of Steuben County, and teachers and partners urged parents at a district webinar to build children’s background knowledge to improve reading comprehension.
Winslow said the district is emphasizing the “language comprehension” side of reading and urged parents to help children connect texts to real-world knowledge before reading. “Background knowledge is essential for reading comprehension,” Winslow said, quoting education researcher Nell K. Duke.
The webinar distinguished two classroom approaches: activating background knowledge (helping students recall what they already know about a topic) and building background knowledge (front-loading information students need to understand a text). Winslow and first-grade teacher Megan Crankshaw described classroom practices such as using pre-reading discussion prompts, videos or photos, focused student research and topic-centered field trips to prepare…
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