I read the article by Gill and the article by Gregory and Cahill. Both articles talked about the importance of a schema in comprehension. The article by Gregory and Cahill talked about activating a schema. The students in that article were only kindergartners, but they knew what a schema is. The defined a schema as “what you already know.” This article talked about beginning to teach comprehension by activating schemas. The article by Gill talked about schema theory which “tells us that readers must have adequate background knowledge to understand what they read; it also tells us that readers must activate their prior knowledge.” I enjoyed reading the pre-reading activities in Gill’s article that can help to activate prior knowledge, such as graphic organizers and organizational walk-throughs. I would love to learn more about activities that can help to activate prior knowledge.
Here is an example of a K-W-L chart that was mentioned in the article by Gill:
Here is a link to a website I found that talks about activating prior knowledge and explains a few different activities you could use in your classroom:
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/prior-knowledge-tapping-into-often-classroom-rebecca-alber
I loved the idea for the KWL chart. I am actually using that in my portfolio and I cannot wait to see the outcome of the chart with my future students. Also, I was so surprised by the fact that kindergarteners knew what schemas meant.
ReplyDeleteI read the same articles and thought the KWL chart idea was brilliant! What a fantastic way to activate prior knowledge!
ReplyDeleteWe have used the KWL charts in previous labs at the ELC and they are excellent to make! They are both helpful to the students and the teacher so everybody gets on the same page of the topic. I liked how the kindergartners were 'activating their schema' and their different ways of letting their teacher know what they wanted to say.
ReplyDeleteAt the risk of sounding redundant, I also really liked the KWL chart! As a psych major, it's really cool to hear psychology terms used in other subjects, and so the discussion about children's "schemas" got me so excited.
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