Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.
~ Emilie Buchwald ~

There is more treasure in books than
in all the pirate's loot on Treasure Island.
~ Walt Disney ~

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.  There are three types of connections that we can have- text to self, text to text, and text to world.  (Last year my second graders made up a fourth category- text to movie).  Our schema, or background knowledge, can change as we learn new information.  We delete or modify our schema as we continue to learn!