Schema Theory

Okay everybody. You have an assignment. Here are the instructions: write a summary for the following passage after reading it only once and not referring back to the text. Alright, are you ready? Here you go....

The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups. Of course one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities that is the next step, otherwise you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few things at once than too many. In the short run this may not seem important but complications can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well.

At first the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon, however, it will become just another facet of life. It is difficult to foresee any end to the necessity for this task in the immediate future, but then one can never tell. After the procedure is complete, one arranges the materials into different groups again. Then they can be put in their appropriate places. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be repeated. However, it is a part of life.

So....how did your summary go? Are you baffled? Confused? Wondering what the heck this person is talking about?

Reading is the ability to make meaning out of text. It is not just putting letters together to form the appropriate sounding words, but being able to create meaning out of those words. We all bring something to the text that helps us create that meaning....that background knowledge is called schemata. In 1938, a woman named Louise Rosenblatt published a book called Literature as Exploration and showed that readers use prior knowledge, information, and experiences stored in the mind to make meaning from a text. According to Rosenblatt, during reading a reader integrates this personal knowledge with the author's words, creating an original text. What a reader brings to a text affects their ability to comprehend the author's words. While reading, readers constantly construct meaning by using past experiences and knowledge to fill in implied information. Good readers find this process so natural that they are unaware that they are filling in data that has never been mentioned in the book. Research consistently reveals a strong reciprocal relationship between prior knowledge and reading comprehension. The more one already knows, the more one comprehends, and the more one comprehends, the more one learns new knowledge to enable comprehension of an even greater and broader array of topics and texts (Linda G. Fielding and P. David Pearson in Educational Leadership).

In the passage above, some of you may be missing some background information and it is affecting your comprehension of the text. (I'm debating whether to go ahead and fill in some of your missing schemata or whether to wait and hear what your guesses are as to what the passage is about! Hmmm...I think I want to hear your interpretations!) However, you may be experiencing what a number of kids go through on a daily basis as they go through their days at school, attempting to read and make meaning out of the many texts placed in front of them.

I mentioned in previous posts how limited the experiences of some kids, especially in more economically challenged areas, are. Once I learned about this theory, it really made sense to me. I now understand why reading and standardized tests are such a struggle for our students. I believe it is because they have so little schemata on which to construct meaning from. Schemata is kinda like a big file cabinet in your brain. Every time you read something, see something, hear about something...you tuck it away in a little file in your brain until you need to pull it back out to understand something later on. The more you read, see, do, and experience, the fatter your files are and the fatter your files continue to get. But for some kids, who rarely read or are read to, who rarely travel outside their neighborhoods, and rarely expand their cultural intake beyond BET and K104, there is not a lot of opportunity to fill their files. Growing up, we lived in the country. We didn't watch a lot of TV at all. Some would think that our opportunities for learning were limited. Even though our family wasn't rich, we did take trips every summer. We did read. My brothers spent hours watching my granddad or my dad and uncle fix things. Brandon spent hours taking things apart and putting them back together. We were always doing or reading things, and all of that helped to broaden our knowledge enough to have the tools to gain even more knowledge.

When I was still in the classroom teaching reading, it was easy to see when the students' meaning broke down as we read. Class discussions would reveal just how many gaps there were in their understanding. There is so much prior knowledge that is missing sometimes, that I'm sure that reading their textbooks or passages for standardized tests can be like reading in a foreign language. Let's say that the reading passage on the TAKS test was all about a camping trip. For kids who have experienced camping, they are going to be able to connect and relate well to the story. They are going to be able to visualize it as they read and thus have a better comprehension at the end. But for kids who have never been camping, never been in the outdoors, and don't really know anyone who has, this text is going to be much harder to understand. They're going to be distracted from the story's purpose by trying to figure out what to visualize in their mind. They don't have any files to draw upon and overall comprehension will be limited, even if they can "read" every word in the story fluently.

This is why I feel so compelled to expose kids to as many different things as possible. This is why I like to bring Khris out to West Texas and just let him observe new things. Sometimes I will pick kids up and just let them run errands with me. We might go to the bank so they can see how to deposit money or to the post office to see how to mail a package. My favorite part of the After School Academy used to be the field trips. We went to nature trails, to the Mrs. Baird's bread factory, to a Dallas Mavericks game, to college campuses. The kids may not remember these trips in detail, but hopefully each experience gave them a chance to tuck some kind of new knowledge away in a file somewhere, to be pulled out and used subconsciously later on. Therefore, I believe education is much more than reading, writing, and math...it is all the varied experiences that give you the tools necessary to make meaning out of texts, out of life, really. All kids deserve at least a chance to have those opportunities, no matter what neighborhood they live in.

With that said, I would like to know what you think the opening passage was about! Leave your summaries in the comments section! I'll give you some important background information next time and we will see how your interpretations change! :-)