Listening to my classmates describe their lesson-plans across a variety of subjects tonight during literacy class, I noticed that while they did a great job designing their lessons in such a way that helped their students access their prior knowledge to the content, the lessons did not seem to help students access their prior knowledge in terms of their existing schema (personal experiences/student background connected to content). “Prior knowledge” seemed to be limited to the scaffolding technique of bridging (connecting students’ prior knowledge of content to new knowledge of content). And the scaffolding technique of schema building (connecting students’ prior experiences with content in connection to new knowledge of content), seemed to be lacking.
For example, one of my classmates created a very thoughtful lesson plan that connected students’ prior knowledge of math slopes to the equation y = mx +b. While this helps students bridge their prior knowledge of math slopes to the new knowledge they will learn, this aspiring math teacher could also allow students to discuss their experiences with slopes outside of the classroom as an introduction to the lesson on slopes. As a high school student, this would have allowed me to connect slopes to my personal experiences with snow skiing, which would have helped me to more deeply conceptualize the abstract line/slope on a x/y axis, thus making it more accessible and meaningful to me.
In my Chinese class yesterday morning, I led a reading session about two students who discussed their university majors, what career path they hoped to pursue, and finally the influence that their parents have had on these decisions/aspirations. After I finished the reading lesson, my cooperating teacher asked me whether I gave my students a chance to access their prior knowledge to the content before requiring them to read the text. While I previewed the text with my students by allowing them to comment in Chinese on the pictures around the text and then make predictions about the text, I did not provide an opportunity for schema building by allowing them to discuss the majors that they hoped to study, the future careers that they hoped to pursue, and finally the influence that their own parents had in their lives with respect to these decisions/aspirations.
This morning, I decided to give them this opportunity. I had my students pair up and discuss in Chinese these three key aspects of the text for three minutes. Then I called on several students to share with the class what they learned from their respective partner. One student commented in Chinese how her partner wanted to become a doctor because her [living] grandfather currently has an incurable disease, while her other grandfather passed away due to an incurable disease when she was a little girl. As a result, she wants to become a doctor in order to research cures for these diseases. Another student commented that his respective partner also wants to be a doctor, but only because his parents are forcing him to study medicine so that he makes a lot of money. By allowing my students to access their existing schemas with the content, the text became much more meaningful, and I noted that the level of engagement in the lesson was far greater than the previous day.
Moving forward, I hope to be more proactive with respect to allowing my students to access the content not only by bridging their prior knowledge to the lesson’s objective, but by allowing them to connect their existing schemas to the content as well.
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