Dear colleague,
In Kelly Gallagher's new book, To Read Stuff You Have to Know Stuff: Helping Students Build and Use Prior Knowledge, he offers an abundance of mini-sermon material for the Value of building knowledge.
As the title proclaims, Gallagher's apologetics for knowledge-building focus especially on the role that knowledge plays in reading comprehension. But throughout the book (and in the conversation I had with Gallagher; see the video below), further arguments emerge to support the idea that all of our classrooms should be knowledge-rich environments:
- “You have to know stuff to read stuff, but you really have to know stuff to write stuff” (p. 5).
- Knowledge undergirds good thinking, specifically in doing things like visualizing, questioning, making predictions, or drawing inferences (pp. 9-12).
- Knowledge-building is in large part vocabulary building — just knowing words, what they mean, how their meanings compare to other words — and as we get rich in words, we become rich in our ability to comprehend and think (Ch 2).
- Knowledge-building affects our comprehension of even the simplest forms of communication — e.g., sentences, political cartoons, memes, tweets — and as we own more knowledge, we gain the ability to play with the infinite complexities of sentence construction (Ch 3).
- Knowledge-building helps us talk back to articles and news stories and to rise above the storm surge of clickbait and “angertainment” that pervades the Internet (Ch 4).
- Lack of prior knowledge is the key obstacle students face when reading whole-class texts; as we develop prior knowledge in advance of reading texts, we can be amazed at the good feeling that comes with doing a hard thing (Ch 5).
These are just some of the many apologetics Gallagher provides for creating knowledge-rich curricula and classrooms, no matter where or what we teach. (And if you're concerned about whose knowledge we're teaching…there's a whole chapter for that, too.)
But enough of me talking — let's hear from the man himself. Below you'll find a video of a long-from interview in which Kelly and I discuss the ideas in his new book.
Teaching right beside you,
DSJR
Liz Campbell says
Thank you for sharing this conversation! I’ve learned so much from both of you over the years, and I look forward to seeing both of you at NCTE in Boston next month.
Dave Stuart Jr. says
Liz, I’m so glad it was as helpful for you as it was for me
See you in Boston!
Lisandra Tamez says
This blog beautifully captures the essence of Kelly Gallagher’s work — it’s a compelling reminder of how deeply knowledge shapes not just reading and writing, but our ability to think critically and engage meaningfully with the world around us.
davestuartjr says
I’m so glad, Lisandra — thank you for sharing that.