Building Background Knowledge to Improve High School Students’ Literacy Skills

Summary for Educators

By Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver | Edutopia | September 17, 2026

Reading comprehension is not simply a matter of teaching students isolated strategies such as identifying the main idea or making inferences. Students understand difficult texts more successfully when they already know something about the subject.

In this practical article, high school English and history teacher Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver argues that every content-area teacher can help students become stronger readers by deliberately building background knowledge before asking them to tackle challenging material. She recommends three interconnected practices: activating what students already know, explicitly teaching new knowledge before reading, and dramatically increasing the amount of related material students read.

THE BIG IDEA

Knowledge helps students comprehend what they read.

A student may be able to decode every word on a page and still struggle to understand the text if the ideas, vocabulary, people, events, or concepts are unfamiliar.

That makes background knowledge a critical component of literacy instruction—not only in English classes but also in science, social studies, mathematics, and other subjects.

MacLeod-Bluver describes background knowledge as the intellectual “connective tissue” that allows new information to make sense. Teachers can strengthen that connective tissue by first discovering what students already know and then deliberately filling important gaps before introducing demanding texts.

The implication for secondary schools is significant: teachers should not assume that students possess the context necessary to understand a difficult reading simply because they are in middle or high school.

Preparing students to read is not “watering down” the text. It may be what makes rigorous reading possible.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Activate what students already know.
Students arrive with experiences, ideas, vocabulary, and knowledge that teachers can connect to new learning. Anticipation guides, K-W-L charts, quick writes, four-corners discussions, and similar activities can help students retrieve relevant prior knowledge before reading.

2. Build missing knowledge explicitly.
Sometimes students simply don't possess the information necessary to understand a text. Teachers can provide that foundation through short videos, photographs, maps, timelines, demonstrations, brief readings, and other introductory materials.

3. Create text sets around important topics.
Rather than immediately assigning one difficult core text, teachers can surround it with several shorter, more accessible sources. Students gradually develop the vocabulary and context needed to understand the more challenging material.

4. Make classrooms knowledge-rich.
Gallery walks, photographs, short quotations, semantic maps, videos, artifacts, charts, and related texts can create multiple pathways into unfamiliar content.

5. Increase the volume of reading.
Students build knowledge partly by reading more. MacLeod-Bluver recommends exposing students to multiple texts addressing the same topic so that knowledge, vocabulary, and connections accumulate over time.

6. Literacy belongs to every department.
Reading improvement should not be considered solely the responsibility of English teachers. Science, history, mathematics, career education, and other subjects provide powerful opportunities for students to build specialized knowledge and vocabulary.

WHY IT MATTERS

The problem becomes particularly important in secondary schools.

MacLeod-Bluver notes that on the 2022 NAEP reading assessment, nearly 70 percent of eighth graders performed below the proficient level.

By high school, however, teachers sometimes assume that students already possess the reading skills and background knowledge necessary to understand textbooks, primary documents, scientific explanations, technical vocabulary, and complex articles.

Many do not.

A student reading about the Great Migration, photosynthesis, constitutional law, climate change, or the causes of World War I must possess enough relevant knowledge to interpret what the words actually mean.

This also suggests an important equity issue. Students come to school with dramatically different experiences and opportunities to acquire knowledge. If teachers simply assume that everyone already knows the context required for a lesson, students with less prior exposure begin at a disadvantage.

Explicitly building knowledge helps create a more common starting point.

LEADERSHIP ACTIONS

Examine lesson planning expectations.
Ask teachers to identify not only what students will read but also what students need to know before they can understand the reading.

Encourage text sets instead of isolated readings.
Departments can develop collections of articles, videos, photographs, primary sources, maps, and shorter readings that surround important anchor texts.

Make literacy a schoolwide responsibility.
Professional learning on reading should include science, social studies, mathematics, electives, and career-technical teachers—not just the English department.

Look for background-building during classroom visits.
During walkthroughs, notice whether teachers activate prior knowledge and provide students with sufficient context before asking them to engage with complex material.

Protect rigor while increasing access.
Background knowledge should not replace challenging texts. It should help students successfully reach them.

Increase reading across the curriculum.
Schools might examine a surprisingly simple question: How much are our students actually reading during an average school day?

LEADER REFLECTION

Walk into several classrooms this week and look closely at what students are being asked to read.

Then ask yourself:

“If I knew very little about this subject before entering the classroom, would the lesson give me enough background knowledge to understand this text—or would I simply be expected to figure it out?”

That question may reveal an important distinction between assigning reading and teaching students how to become successful readers.

Original Article

------------------------------

Prepared with the assistance of AI software OpenAI. (2026). ChatGPT (5.2) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com