How can teachers help students enhance their background knowledge before reading?

Discussing relevant experiences and concepts is essential for enhancing students' background knowledge before reading because it actively engages them and connects new information to what they already know. This strategy creates a framework for understanding and retaining the material they are about to encounter. When teachers facilitate conversations about relevant experiences, they help students activate their prior knowledge, making it easier for them to comprehend and integrate new ideas presented in the text.

This connection is crucial because students are more likely to engage with the material actively when they can relate it to their own experiences or prior knowledge, resulting in a deeper understanding and better retention of the content. This method encourages critical thinking and comprehension skills, which are vital for successful reading.

The other options do not effectively contribute to enhancing background knowledge in the same way. Allowing silence during a lesson does not promote active engagement or discussion. Assigning unrelated readings may confuse students rather than build relevant knowledge, and keeping the curriculum uniform may ignore individual students' diverse backgrounds and experiences, limiting their ability to connect with the material meaningfully.