RUNNING HEAD: DOMAIN A -NEW LEARNING IS CONNECTED TO PRIOR LEARNING AND EXPERIENCE 1

Domain A – New Learning is Connected to Prior Learning and Experience

Whitney Lang

National University
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Domain A – New Learning is Connected to Prior Learning and Experience

Inside the Nevada Educator Performance Framework Instructional Practice Standard,

Standard 1 educators are evaluated on is “New Learning is Connected to Prior Learning and

Experience”. Educators are evaluated upon four different indicators within this standard that

provide evidence of their instructional performance with in this area. The following are four

indicators within standard 1 of the instructional practice from the Nevada Educator Performance

Framework.

Indicator 1: The teacher activates all students’ initial understandings of new concepts

and skills.

Indicator 2: The teacher makes connections explicit between previous learning and

new concepts and skills for all students.

Indicator 3: The teacher makes clear the purpose and relevance of new learning for all

students.

Indicator 4: The teacher provides all students opportunities to build on or challenge

initial understandings.

As presented as Artifact Two, within my Domain A from my Portfolio the center focus is

analyzing and correlating a literature review encompassing activating student’s prior knowledge

before delivering new content knowledge to the students. Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey discuss

the relevancy in their article “Building and Activating Background Knowledge”. Two ways

educators can build background knowledge are through direct and indirect structures. “Direct

experiences – such as field trips, labs, simulations, and guest speakers- are very effective ways to

ensure that students have relevant background knowledge” (Fisher & Frey, 2010, p. 62). The
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downside in planning for direct background knowledge-building is the time needed to plan and

execute a direct experience. On the contrary, “indirect experiences build background knowledge

in more subtle ways” (Fisher & Frey, 2010, p. 62). Teachers can use indirect experiences through

models of “think-alouds” and through student discussions through collaborative learning

structures. Although, “it’s important that the teacher check for understanding periodically to

ensure that misconceptions don’t arise from group interactions” (Fisher & Frey, 2010, p. 63).

In higher education teacher preparatory courses, a teacher’s lesson plan is to always open

with an anticipatory activity that activates back ground knowledge and maintains students’

engagement. However, as reading Fisher & Frey’s article, “Building and Activating Background

Knowledge” it was suggested that teachers should integrated background knowledge into the

whole entirely of the lesson, giving students multiple opportunities to build upon their

background knowledge and connection to new learning of content. The article concludes with

specific examples of how an educator can activate background knowledge which includes but is

not limited to: Quick writes, thinking maps, checklists, sentence and paragraph frames (Fisher &

Frey, 2010, p. 64). All in all, are all fantastic suggests for an educator to use when activating

prior knowledge. I was particularly drawn to the sentence and paragraph framing which provides

students with, “a linguistic scaffold so that their attention is focused on the content rather than

the language required to communicate their understanding” (Fisher & Frey, 2010, p. 64). This

impacted my professional prespecified as I feel this structure would in fact be a structure that

would apply to ALL students regardless of their abilities and provide a successful method of

activating student knowledge.

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References

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2010). Building and Activating Background Knowledge. Principal
Leadership, 62-64.