Part Two Summary - Maria Carmen King

Part two emphasize the importance of knowledge for reading and comprehension and here are the points that are important to me.

First, one of the points in the book is how important background knowledge is to reading comprehension, and one thing that every teacher should consider in their classroom is that every student comes from a home with different economic, social, and intellectual background. Many students also come from other countries (like me) and they don’t have the same growing experiences as students born naturally here. How can we grade these students fairly that don’t have that knowledge?

My second point is that sometimes students see some subjects or themes as a foreign item because they previously did not know anything about it and they cannot relate to their reading comprehension. Therefore, students will need more time to assimilate and think on what they are reading.

In my opinion, in order for us as teachers to come out with a theme that is meaningful and interesting to students we should find out more about their background and knowledge before we begin a new lesson.