In chapter 5, Miller gave some great suggestions for helping students use their schema. She stressed the importance of planning, authenticity and precise language. Attending to these concepts can help prevent awkward and ineffective lessons. She offered specific suggestions for language to use with the children and recommended books that are appropriate when introducing schema. She suggests beginning with text-to-self connections and then moving to text-to-text, ending with text-to-world. Using think-alouds as she reads quality literature, she shares her thought processes with the group.
Our group decided we would try some of Miller's suggestions this week. We wanted to introduce the word schema and use some the books she suggested to "think-aloud" making text-to-self connections.
When I first said the word "schema" my kids giggled They thought it sounded funny! We read Oliver Button is a Sissy by Tomie dePaola (which tied in nicely with a character ed lesson on bullying :), Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes and Koala Lou by Mem Fox. We made a charts of their connections and next week we are going to look again at our chart for Koala Lou and figure out which ones help us the most with our reading. My class was definitely making connections, though not all of them were meaningful ("I saw a koala at the zoo.") I'm looking forward to examining the connections we're making and helping them understand how to make connections that really help them with the story.
We'll keep you posted on our progress!
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In making connections, I always think of the book we read in one of our other classes which was written by Cris Tovani. One of her students had made a connection and her response was "So what?!!" I always think about that when my students make a connection and it isn't meaningful. I think it's the signal that we need to probe deeper into their thinking.
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