Second graders will refer to their schema as a “filing cabinet in their brain”… and they are absolutely right! Schema is all about activating our prior knowledge about a book before, during, and after we read. It is making those CONNECTIONS with the story that allow us to FEEL and UNDERSTAND more. Those meaningful connections will help us to understand the author’s purpose and other story elements DEEPER and CLEARER. We can connect in different ways to the books that we read. Whenever you sit down to read a book, you think about what you already know about the subject (we call it searching in our mental filing cabinets). Our schema, or background knowledge, can change as we learn new information. We delete or modify our schema as we continue to learn! (click here to learn more about our schema from our class website)

Listen to our second graders sing the schema song:

schema-song.mp3