Teaching Numeracy: Habit #2 - Develop Schema & Activate Background Knowledge

Welcome back to my Teaching Numeracy blog series! Today, we're chatting about Habit #2: Develop Schema & Activate Background Knowledge.

I had a really hard time connecting with this chapter. Perhaps that tells me that this is the most important chapter for me to reread later on. I didn't feel like my practices connected with the author's examples at all. I know that I have to work on this!

Here are two areas where I think that I can improve developing schema and activating background knowledge:

1. Use a cloze activity in math. I loved this idea because I haven't tried this! I have found that my students struggle with building the academic language that they need to write about their thinking and share their understanding of key mathematical concepts. Structuring a cloze activity will allow students to practice using mathematical vocabulary while also demonstrating what a student knows about a topi.
2. Frontload, frontload, frontload. I have always had a hard time doing this. With the way that my schedules are set up, my small group time is after our whole group lesson. That means that it will take some thoughtful preparation to make sure that I'm hitting the required vocabulary and concepts the day before I teach it. I don't think that this is impossible and it's definitely worth a try!

What do you do to develop schema and activate background knowledge?