Building Content Knowledge Before and During Reading

The best reading experiences don’t just confirm what students already know — they challenge, complicate, and expand their understanding.

KELSEY HAMMOND
​​Senior Professional Development Coach
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I used to think I had to tell students everything before reading a challenging text. Before Their Eyes Were Watching God, I’d launch into a historical overview of the Harlem Renaissance. Before Frankenstein, I’d explain the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and galvanism. The idea was that if they had enough context upfront, they wouldn’t feel lost.

And in a way, it worked. When we started reading, students recognized ideas we had discussed — the social structures that shaped Janie’s world, the philosophical questions that haunted Victor Frankenstein. But then something interesting would happen. A passage would complicate what they thought they knew. The historical context gave them a foundation, but the text didn’t always confirm it neatly. Instead, it pushed back. Some details reinforced what we had talked about, while others unsettled it. Janie’s journey wasn’t just about the expectations placed on Black women in the early 20th century — it was about the deeply personal ways she resisted them. The Creature wasn’t just an extension of Enlightenment anxieties — he was also a character with a voice that disrupted the categories we had built.

That’s when I realized that background knowledge isn’t something students get before reading — it’s something they also build while reading. The goal isn’t to frontload so much that the text becomes predictable. It’s to give students just enough footing to begin, and then help them navigate the way the text interacts with — and sometimes challenges — what they think they know.

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What do we mean by "content" and "background" knowledge?

​What does the text and author assume that I already know to enter into the text? Is there a pre-knowledge tool to figure out what my students know or don’t know? How do I use that to curate our scaffolding of offering background knowledge? 

• Setting (place and time) 
• Authors’ identity and background
• Topic (basic level of understanding about the focus of the topic, whether that’s a historical event or a particular topic – what will you need to know and understand about the conflict)
• Context (narrative, counternarrative, etc.) 
• Geographic awareness
• Allegorical connections
• Visual/audio/text/video

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Building content knowledge before reading

These strategies offer students ways to build background knowledge before reading a text. 

​Debate Team Carousel
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​Students rotate through different stations, each presenting a key issue or debate tied to the text. At each stop, they generate arguments for both sides before moving on. This strategy helps them see major themes as contested rather than settled.
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• Example: Before reading Their Eyes Were Watching God, stations pose questions like: Should love or security be the foundation of marriage? or Is silence a form of power or oppression? As students rotate, they engage with multiple perspectives before encountering these tensions in Janie’s journey.
• Example: Before Frankenstein, students debate: Does scientific discovery justify ethical risks? or Are people responsible for what they create? These discussions prepare them to evaluate Victor’s choices with a more nuanced lens.

​Four As Discussion
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Students engage with a central passage or excerpt before reading the full text, responding to four prompts:

• What do they agree with?
• What do they argue against?
• What do they assume?
• What do they aspire to?

Example: Before Their Eyes Were Watching God, students examine an excerpt from Hurston’s “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” considering how ideas of race, identity, and independence connect to their assumptions about the novel.

Example: Before Frankenstein, students analyze a passage from Rousseau on human nature, questioning whether society corrupts people or if people are inherently flawed. These questions set them up to engage with the Creature’s development throughout the novel.

​Navigating Multiple Perspectives

Students examine two different historical or cultural perspectives related to the novel’s time period. This helps them see how a text is shaped by competing social forces.
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• Example: Before Their Eyes Were Watching God, students compare two sources — one from a Harlem Renaissance writer who advocated for embracing Black cultural expression and another from a more conservative perspective arguing that supposed “social respectability” should be prioritized. As they read, they reflect on how Hurston positions Janie within this debate.
• Example: Before Frankenstein, students read about the optimism of the Industrial Revolution alongside Romantic-era fears of dehumanization. How does Shelley engage with both perspectives? Does she embrace one or critique both?

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Building knowledge during reading 

​As students read, they don’t just apply what they learned beforehand — they deepen, challenge, and revise it. These strategies help them engage with the text as an active conversation.

​Three Reads
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A structured close reading strategy where students read a passage three times, each with a different focus: first for comprehension, second for structure and language, and third for connections to prior knowledge.
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• Example: In Their Eyes Were Watching God, students read Janie’s moment under the pear tree three times—first for what literally happens, then for Hurston’s sensory language and imagery, then for how it establishes the novel’s ideas about love and self-discovery.
• Example: In Frankenstein, students do the same with the Creature’s plea to Victor, considering how their initial understanding deepens as they examine Shelley’s rhetorical choices and the broader themes of responsibility and rejection.

​Lifelines
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​Students pause at key moments to break down an excerpt with the prompts:

• It says… (Summarizing what the text literally states)
• This means… (Interpreting its deeper meaning)
• This is important because… (Connecting it to a larger theme, character, or idea)

Example: In Their Eyes Were Watching God, students use Lifelines to analyze Janie’s reflections after Joe Starks’ death—what she says about herself, what it reveals about her changing sense of freedom, and how it shifts the novel’s direction.

Example: In Frankenstein, students use the strategy when the Creature recounts learning language and observing the De Laceys, breaking down how he interprets human behavior and why his response to rejection is so significant.

​Exploring Historical Echoes

Students pause to connect a key moment in the text to real historical or cultural moments, asking: 

• How does this scene reflect real-world events? 
• How does this scene distort real-world events?
• How does this scene overall respond to real-world events?

Example: In Their Eyes Were Watching God, students compare Janie’s trial to real-life cases where Black women had to defend themselves against societal judgment. What does Hurston’s portrayal reflect about racial and gender biases of the time?

Example: In Frankenstein, students examine how the Creature’s experience echoes real debates about exclusion and oppression. How does Shelley’s portrayal align with historical fears about "the other"?

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A text as a conversation

​Background knowledge isn’t something static that students receive before reading — it’s something they build in conversation with the text. What they think they know at the start will evolve, deepen, and sometimes even unravel as they read. Our job isn’t to prepare them with all the answers but to give them just enough to enter the text with curiosity, ready to test and explore ideas along the way.

These strategies — both before and during reading — invite students to engage with texts as ongoing conversations. Some moments will confirm what they expected. Others will challenge what they thought they knew. And that’s the real work of reading: not just decoding words on a page but making sense of a world that doesn’t always fit into neat categories.

If we teach students to hold contradictions, question their assumptions, and revisit their interpretations, we aren’t just building background knowledge — we’re helping them become the kind of readers who can navigate complexity and embrace uncertainty.