"K-W-L" is likely one of the most ubiquitous acronyms in today's elementary schools when it comes to readingcomprehension instruction. The Know-Want to Know-Learn (K-WL; Ogle, 1986) instructional technique accesses students' prior knowledge and prompts students to ask questions about an expository text. Then after reading, students refl ect on what they have learned. The K-W-L is widely used across the grades and content areas.
K-W-L is popular for many reasons. It is easy to use, both by teachers and students. The K-W-L format neatly lends itself to worksheet-like graphic organizers that provide artifacts into students' thinking. There is also research to suggest that kids like it. When compared to two other comprehension approaches, students tended to report that they found K-W-L most enjoyable (Stahl, 2008).
Authentic Reading
Given its popularity, what's not to love about K-W-L? Certainly we cannot argue against the three strategiesthat the K-W-L encourages. Activating one's background knowledge of a text is a foundational strategywhen comprehending. However, we ask the reader to consider: when was the last time you independently created a K-W-L chart before reading a newspaper, a magazine article, an informational article on the web, or even a gardening book? In other words, creating K-W-L charts is not authentic to how adults actually read expository texts in the real world.
Scaffolding with K-W-L
That said, the K-W-L may be an effective technique to scaffold students' emerging comprehension skills. The key word is scaffold. Too often, we see elementary teachers use the K-W-L as an endpoint. The K-W-L may help students understand an individual text better; however, we question how much the K-W-L will help students comprehend future texts in general.