12 Ways to Activate Your Students’ Prior Knowledge

A fourth-grade student diving into a new lesson on biomes might have a hazy recollection of key terms like biodiversity or adaptation. Unattended to, this vocabulary gap can fester, undermining the student’s fluency and stranding core concepts in the past that will inevitably resurface in the new unit. By briefly revisiting earlier lessons on habitats and ecosystems, the same fourth grader can solidify and then secure their past learning to new information, building a deeper and more stable knowledge base. 

Cognitive scientists call this process of sliding new material into older conceptual models “subsumption”—a theory first floated in the early 1960s by psychologist David Ausubel—and confirm that learning is more durable when new information is explicitly connected to prior knowledge drawn from earlier learning, experiences, or reading. Students who review and integrate older material through strategies like K-W-L charts or by engaging in “brainstorm webs” also build more robust conceptual models and demonstrate stronger comprehension and higher achievement. 

“Learning progresses primarily from prior knowledge, and only secondarily from the materials we present to students,” according to literacy specialist and instructor at UCLA’s graduate school of education Rebecca Alber. Teachers spend lots of time gathering new instructional content she notes—but often overlook the information students already bring with them to new material.

There are dozens of ways to spark students’ prior knowledge. In a 2023 literature review, researchers analyzed the effectiveness of 30 prior knowledge activation strategies and concluded that tactics like concept maps, low-stakes quizzes, and structured group discussion can meaningfully improve students’ comprehension and engagement when used at key moments—before, during, or after new learning.  

Drawing on research and classroom practice, the strategies below highlight evidence-backed ways to help students tap into what they already know. 

Bait and Switch: Before grappling with a new topic, professor and former middle school teacher Curtis Chandler uses quick, low-stakes true-or-false quizzes to surface prior knowledge and uncover common misconceptions. The twist: although all the statements are plausible, they are also all false. 

Before a new lesson on ocean chemistry, for example, students might evaluate statements like: “All oceans have the same salinity,” or “Nothing lives in anoxic mud.” Some students will be tripped up by terms like “anoxic” or “salinity,” while others will successfully draw on what they already know to answer the questions correctly. Reviewing the answers together after the pre-quiz allows teachers to reintroduce critical terms and address lingering misconceptions while priming students for deeper exploration in the lessons ahead. 

Go Old School With K-W-L Charts: These charts prompt students to identify what they Know, what they Want to know, and what they’ve Learned about a topic. 

Teachers often use the “K” and “W” sections of the chart before the intended unit or lesson to activate curiosity, while the “L” can come after to help students reflect on what they’ve learned. Variations of the K-W-L chart might include additional columns that ask students how they might find answers to their questions (Research) or what they’ll do after learning new information (Apply), write high school teachers Larry Ferlazzo and Katie Hull Sypnieski.

Make It Debatable: A 2022 study found that letting kids debate topics before instruction can prime them to engage more deeply with challenging new concepts. 

In the experiment, sixth-graders argued about various evolutionary science scenarios before the lesson—“Why insecticides might become less efficient over time at eliminating flies in a barn,” for example. Students who debated improved from pre- to post-tests on their knowledge of evolution, even before the teacher began formal classwork related to the topic.

Similarly, Ferlazzo and Sypnieski present students with debatable statements related to a new unit of study. Before instruction begins, they distribute anticipation guides and ask the students to agree or disagree with the sentences. For example, in a unit on sports drinks, students might respond to statements like “Schools should not sell sports drinks” or “Sports drinks are better for you than soda” by agreeing or disagreeing, and explaining why—teasing out their understanding of topics like nutritional value and product marketing in the process. 

Collective Recall (and Other Information Dumps): Before launching a big statistics project, math teacher Maggie Arnold asks her ninth-graders to independently recall everything they have learned in their statistics unit by writing down terms, math symbols and sketches or graphs. Students then meet in small groups to pool their ideas, consolidating what they remember on a shared whiteboard or sheet of paper. Arnold says the practice helps bring the math skills and concepts students have been working on back to the forefront of their minds.

This is an example of mobilization, a prior knowledge activation strategy that encourages students to “freely activate a set of concepts that are only loosely connected and have not yet developed into a coherent knowledge structure,” write researchers in one 2011 study. In the experiment, eleventh-graders who recalled everything they knew about the heart’s electrical system before new instruction demonstrated stronger consolidation and transfer of new learning afterwards—particularly those students who began with less prior knowledge. 

Read Children’s Books: Before approaching a complex text, Ferlazzo and Sypnieski first provide students with simpler, preparatory texts that prompt students to surface what they already know about a topic, while building background knowledge and reading confidence. To differentiate, they often use the same text written in different Lexile Levels. Tools like Rewordify or Diffit allow teachers to produce a passage of text at different reading levels in mere seconds.

Alber likes to find a children's book that's related in some way to a new topic or skill she is about to introduce, which allows her to preview key themes or topics—and helps students activate existing knowledge in a fun, highly engaging way. Before teaching about Communism, middle school teacher Howard Rosenberg reads and discusses aspects of The Rainbow Fish with his students. The book, which is targeted for early elementary school students, illustrates a central tenet of Communism in an accessible way, which makes his older students “more prepared to discuss the philosophy.”

Analyze Textual Features: A text’s arrangement, structure, and organization can offer students an accessible entry point into unfamiliar material. By examining features such as the title, headings, captions, and visuals of a text, students generate expectations and begin connecting new content to existing knowledge. 

Research suggests that these textual features don’t just make a page look more readable—they measurably improve understanding. In a 2023 study, college students who read science passages with bolded subheadings scored almost twice as high on retention tests as peers who read the same material presented as a block of text. Subheadings, captions, and bolded or underlined text support students’ mental map of content and encourage them to “think more about the content during reading,” the researchers concluded, helping them anticipate what’s coming, and organize new information as they proceed. 

Draw Concept Maps: Concept maps help students visualize relationships between ideas by linking concepts with arrows, labels, or annotations. The practice allows students to zoom out and place new learning into the context of a larger, existing web of knowledge, while also revealing gaps or misconceptions. 

In one 2022 study, fifth-graders who created organizational drawings of complex systems, like the water cycle, for example, demonstrated significantly stronger comprehension than peers who relied on simple representational drawings, like a basic diagram of a vacuole, where plants store water.

Adopt a Different POV: Students with a more advanced understanding of a topic will benefit from more complex prior knowledge activation tasks. Asking these students to adopt a unique or surprising perspective before learning new material will challenge them to refine their thinking.

In a 2011 study, a mix of high school biology and university nursing and physiotherapy students who had studied the human circulatory system imagined themselves as blood cells traveling through the heart as they deepened their understanding of the muscle’s intricacies. The researchers concluded that “aligning prior knowledge activation to learners’ prior knowledge”—by using more advanced techniques with more knowledgeable students—produced better learning outcomes.

“Assigning a perspective from which a text should be read results in the activation of an appropriate schema that guides subsequent information processing,” the researchers write. Teachers can apply this strategy across subjects—for example, asking students to analyze new historical texts from the perspective of a group they’ve formerly studied, or assess a passage in a novel from the point of view of a character whose motivations and traits have been previously examined. 

Gather Informational Hooks: Another way Ferlazzo and Sypnieski stimulate prior knowledge, build background, and spark interest is by showing students a relevant video, slideshow, or photograph before starting a new unit or chapter. 

Teachers can invite open discussion, pose a question for quick debate, or prompt students with simple questions, such as “What did you notice?” or “What did you find interesting?” before asking them to write or discuss observations. If you’re teaching a lesson about the 1920s, for example, you could gather news clippings from the stock crash of 1929 or pictures of young flappers on the streets of New York City or Paris. 

Alber shows students a provocative quote from an important figure in a given subject, such as a historical figure in history class, a scientist in science class, or an author in English class, and then prompts them to “connect this statement to something happening in the world at the time it was said.” 

Anchor New Learning in Real-World Situations: Connecting new ideas to real-world situations that students already understand can deepen comprehension. In a 2010 study, ninth-grade students read three chapters of To Kill A Mockingbird, then were prompted to explore key concepts of the novel through realistic scenarios, such as comparing the novel’s trial to a modern court case and evaluating how the verdict in the novel (which wrongly convicts an innocent character due to the jury’s racial prejudice) conflicts with national ideals of justice.

Students could, for example, immerse themselves in the American history that informs the novel by analyzing landmark Supreme Court Cases concerning racial justice, such as Brown v. Board of Education or Loving v. Virginia.  

Teach It to Peers: Elaboration requires students to explain a concept they’ve previously learned in their own words and connect new ideas to what they already know, writes Kripa Sundar, an education consultant and researcher. “The more connections we make, the more likely we are to remember relevant information,” she writes. 

One way to prompt elaboration is by asking students to become teachers and explain a topic they previously encountered out loud to a peer, small group, or even to themselves; the effort will reveal gaps in their understanding that can be addressed before proceeding on to the new material. A 2024 study found that students who explained material to their peers performed almost 50 percent better on comprehension tasks than those who simply restudied the material. 

Create a “Brainstorm Web”: Before approaching a new unit, Alber often uses a brainstorm web to surface students’ existing ideas. She writes a key term—such as “photosynthesis”—in the center of the board, and students add related words or concepts around it, such as “plants,” “sun,” “water,” or “light.” 

The activity surfaces what students already know—and think they know—about a topic, and gives teachers a quick snapshot of students’ understanding and misconceptions. Alber keeps the web visible throughout the unit, inviting students to revise or expand it as their thinking evolves.