Schema

Today we continued to talk about schema.  I had students think of what they knew about chicken nuggets (not too surprising they knew a lot) and then I asked them to think about everything they knew about foie gras (not too surprising they they did not know a lot).  I reminded the students that they had schema for chicken nuggets but not much schema for foie gras.

Schema or background knowledge is another thinking strategy that can help our readers.  I tried to show the students how I make text to text connections while I read another Patricia Polacco book The Keeping Quilt.  This was the fourth Polacco book I have read in the last few days we also have read Thundercake and Mrs. Katz and Tush and My Rotten Red Headed Older Brother.  As I read the book the class and I talked about what the books we had read had in common with the new book.

We will continue to talk about schema the rest of this week.  Tomorrow the class is even going to try and make text to text connections while looking at some famous paintings.  We also looked at some artwork while talking about metacognition and the students did an amazing job, so hopefully tomorrow will be a repeat.

Before we read aloud today I asked the students to fill out a one-word notecard.  We had actually done a one-word notecard on the first day of school where students told me how they felt about coming back to school.  On the one-word notecard today I had the students write down one word they would use to describe Ivan from The One and Only Ivan.  On the other side of the notecard the students had to explain why they picked this word to describe Ivan.

I love this little assessment to check if students are understanding a book.  I think it could be something you could use at home during at-home-reading.  The students would not even need to write it down they could just pick a character from their book and pick one word to describe the character and then tell why they picked that word.

We also started social studies today.  The students got to watch an interview with Kevin Plank, the founder of UnderArmor.  When the students were done I had them fill out a page in their Social Studies interactive notebooks listing the things that they think they know about entrepreneurs.  I will try and put a link to this video but tonight I am having some technical difficulties.

The rest of this week we are going to continue to discuss entrepreneurs.  We will think about the characteristics that make an entrepreneur and entrepreneur.  This will kick off our unit on economics.

Hope you are having a nice start to your week.