Chapter6

Themes and Messages:

Reading for understanding depends more on an established context than innate intelligence: A doctor "might not have schema for law like a lawyer does, but they are both smart" (99).

Every student brings some prior knowedge to reading, but educators do not always help them activate knowledge from previous experiences, discussions, or readings (100).

Allowing students to demonstrate and share their prior knowledge builds individual confidence and a more social/collaborative learning environment (106).

Key Questions for School LIbrarians:

As a school librarian, how can I show I value the knowledge that students bring-- not just the knowledge I want to give?

When I am collaborating with faculty, do I approach it with the necessary schema? Or do I treat every situation the same?

Are the classroom teachers and I keeping each informed about student preparation for reading/research? Are we overlapping in material-- or are we leaving gaps between each other?

Strategies:

CONCEPT MAPPING

This strategy helps students activite their prior knowledge and build connections between their previous experience and future reading. Students are divided into groups, and each group is assigned a key term associated with an upcoming unit of study (ex: persecution). As individuals, students makes lists/maps of any associations they have with this word, whether they are other words or personal experiences. Students then discuss their maps with the group, and the group discusses whether or not they share the same concept/definition of their assigned word.

CONCEPT TREE

The concept tree is a type of graphic organizer that grows from the key terms used in previous mapping strategy. When the organizer is used to accompany an article of hate crimes, "persecution" would be one of the key concepts placed in the roots of the tree. The main topic of the article (hate crimes) is the trunk of the tree. As students read, they fill in the branches of trees with the subtopics addressed within the article and details within the subtopics. For example, one of the branches might be "Targets of Hate Crimes," with specific examples (women, ethnic groups).