Last Updated on March 4, 2025
The following is a guest post written by literacy coach Hannah Irion-Frake detailing how she recommends using Listenwise to build background knowledge and support vocabulary acquisition.
Hannah Irion-Frake is a literacy coach in Central Pennsylvania with over 16 years of classroom experience. She has degrees in Elementary Education, Reading, and Curriculum & Instruction. Hannah is also a Local LETRS Facilitator and Acadience Mentor. She is a self-proclaimed literacy nerd and shares passionately about reading at www.readingwithmrsif.com and on Instagram @readingwithmrsif.
Comprehension is a complex cognitive process. The challenge of teaching comprehension is perhaps even greater. To help our students develop comprehension processes, we must understand what happens in the brain while we read. Then, we can use resources like Listenwise and Lingolift to scaffold learning and engage students in building comprehension.
In this blog post, I’ll share an overview of two key factors related to reading comprehension — vocabulary and background knowledge — and look at ways to use Listenwise to support comprehension.
Mental Model: How Comprehension Works
This mental model graphic is a helpful framework for thinking about all the complexities that go into comprehension. We can break down the mental model framework by looking at the reader, the text, and what is happening in the brain.
The Reader
The reader brings their motivation, interests, and effort as they tackle listening to or reading a text. Within the text, we must consider the complexity of the author’s writing as we navigate between the surface code and the text base. The surface code represents the words and sentences the author has used to convey their message.
As a reader, we need to be able to decode these words, understand the vocabulary being used, and make sense of the syntax being used. As a listener, we remove the challenge of decoding, but we still must understand the vocabulary and syntax of the text.
The Text
The text base represents the underlying message of the words and all of the information that the author has included just below the surface. The reader must make inferences between sentences to understand how the author has connected ideas. As the reader accesses the surface code and makes inferences to understand the text base, they are holding information in their working memory. They are also pulling relevant knowledge from their long-term memory to make sense of what they are reading.
The Brain
Long-term memory is where we store background knowledge and vocabulary knowledge. The reader must activate knowledge that is relevant to the text they are reading to comprehend it. As all of this is happening, the reader is actively constructing a mental model, or mental representation, of what they are reading. This mental model is what students think about when understanding the text and is what they’ll refer to when they need to talk or write about the ideas in the text.
Vocabulary and Background Knowledge
Vocabulary and background knowledge are particularly important factors as the mental model develops. They can promote strong comprehension and a strong mental model. They can also be places where comprehension breaks down for students.
Solid vocabulary knowledge helps students make sense of the surface code and the underlying text base. The background knowledge stored in long-term memory helps the reader make new connections and build their understanding as they read.
This may sound very complex, but the good news is that with intentional instruction, educators can build vocabulary and background knowledge before and during reading to support the comprehension process.
There are many engaging ways to help students build knowledge, including anticipation guides and KWL charts, teacher read-alouds, and authentic experiences with artifacts, videos, photographs, and virtual field trips.
Preplanning activities to preteach vocabulary and build background knowledge may sound overwhelming to teachers. Fortunately, there are amazing resources out there to help, including Listenwise!
Using Listenwise to Build Background Knowledge and Support Vocabulary Acquisition
Using Listenwise’s student-friendly podcasts to build background knowledge and increase vocabulary exposure is both effective and engaging for students. Listenwise also makes planning easy for educators with their pre-made science, social studies, and ELA collections and the many teaching resources included in their lessons!
Here’s an example of building background knowledge and vocabulary exposure before and during a unit using one of the Listenwise collections, Animal Adaptations.
This collection features seven podcasts about how animals survive in different climates and conditions because of their adaptations. From camouflage to high speed, these podcasts share stories about Arctic foxes, butterflies, cheetahs, bats, and more. This is a common science unit for many educators. In my own state of Pennsylvania, this is a third grade standard: Describe animal characteristics that are necessary for survival.
Before Listening
Regardless of your district’s curriculum, there are key vocabulary words that should be explicitly taught to students using the previously mentioned vocabulary routine. Words like survival, predator, prey, adaptation, camouflage, mimicry, and instinct are words that require explicit instruction. These words are also used in these podcasts, increasing exposure to vocabulary through listening to them in the context of natural language.
This collection also provides opportunities to use Listenwise to build knowledge before and throughout the unit. You can ask students to listen to the podcasts in this collection at the beginning of the unit to build background knowledge before they dive into the content.
For example, the podcast Cheetahs’ Super Speed is sure to pique student interest in the topic while also discussing key points about animal adaptations in a very student-friendly way. You could also use each of the podcasts alongside the lessons in your science unit, especially if your curriculum includes some of the specific animals included in this Listenwise collection.
During Listening
Teachers can pause the podcast periodically and ask students to respond to a short audio segment by answering a question to check for comprehension, repeating or summarizing what they heard, or asking a question of their own.
It can be helpful to pause and replay a sentence containing a key vocabulary word in the context of authentic language and ask students to repeat or paraphrase the sentence.
When playing the story Teen Discovers New Planet, teachers might stop and replay the sentences in which a high school student explains “the cool thing” about the planet he discovered, and students can discuss what it means for a planet to orbit two stars at the same time, compare that to earth’s orbit, etc.
After Listening
As students listen and build knowledge, educators can help students make connections using anchor charts, class discussions, and writing opportunities.
For example, after listening to the podcasts Arctic Foxes Use Good Camouflage and Colorful Butterfly Wings, students will have heard examples of how arctic foxes and butterflies use camouflage to avoid predators.
Arctic foxes change their fur color from white in the winter to a grayish brown color in the summer to blend in with their seasonal surroundings. Certain butterflies use the color on the underside of their wings to blend into the leaves around them. Educators can add these ideas and other examples to a class anchor chart about camouflage. Students can discuss these animal adaptation examples as a class or with partners. Then, they can explain their understanding in writing, at a sentence level or in a more complex paragraph structure.
Comprehension is complex— both for students to develop and for the educators teaching them. Including opportunities to build background knowledge and develop vocabulary will help students as they construct a mental model of text. Using resources like Listenwise is a great way to increase vocabulary exposure and build knowledge in an engaging way!
