Introducing Schema

When I sent out an email to my entire faculty asking 

"Does anyone have a lint roller in their classroom? I left mine at home and I need it for a lesson today!" I'm certain that I had people saying to themselves... what in the HECK is she doing that that classroom of hers? 

Did you know our brains are like lint rollers? 

We make our schema stick!

I saw this FABULOUS idea from Holly on her blog Crisscross Applesauce in 1st Grade!  What an amazing idea and I couldn't wait to do it in my classroom.

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First, I had my students write a fact they knew! It could be anything. Here were some of their sentences:

*Penguins can't fly.

*Hawaii is warm.

*I am seven years old.

We sat in a circle and I told them their brains are like this lint roller. As we learn, we gather up new facts and they stick to our brain! This is called SCHEMA.

I asked the students to tell me about their schema they wrote.

"I wrote about that Hawaii is warm because I've been there and I felt how warm it was!"

That is a perfect example. Some students might have read about Hawaii's weather and a few had actually been there. We can gather schema from many places (books, friends, experiences, etc.)

After we made our schema "stick", I asked the students to draw and label at least 5 things they have schema about! I made these "heads" on 11X17 paper so they had plenty of room to draw and write. They turned the heads into faces that looked like them.

You can download the schema head (haha sounds funny) HERE and another great printable from Holly at Crisscross Applesauce HERE.

Now that my students understand schema, we will continue to reference it and then move on to inferring!