In To Read Stuff You Have to Know Stuff, Kelly draws from his own teaching practice to share the importance of building students’ prior knowledge at four levels:
Words: How building knowledge helps students to overcome word poverty
Sentences and Passages: How building knowledge helps students to comprehend “small” reading
Articles: How building knowledge helps students to critically read articles—an important skill in our digital age
Books: How building knowledge moves students away from fake reading and back into reading full-length books