Schema!

This week I planned to do an easy returning to school week with a focus on schema. My students all seem to struggle with using what they know to to figure things out as they read. Context clues and inferences are not easy for them!

I scoured the internet for some ideas of how to teach an effective lesson, and there wasn't much out there!

I planned to borrow an idea I found using shoes, but then of course I forgot my lesson appropriate shoes on the day of my lesson! I was irritated that I would have to push my lesson back a day and that I would have to improvise my classes. As I was pulling my bags out of the car I was pleasantly surprised to find not one, but two pairs of shoes that I had worn in weddings that I have been in in the last two months. (See, Mom, it HAS paid off to procrastinate getting the unnecessary items out of my car!)

I selected a sparkly gold shoe and had an idea that I thought just might make for a better lesson anyway. I placed the shoe on my table in a spot where other teachers frequently leave things for me. As my students filtered into the room they were immediately curious about the shoe.

"Why is there a shoe on your desk?" "There is not a shoe on my desk! I would never leave a shoe there! That's not where shoes belong!" "But there is! It's gold!" "Are you sure?" "See, there it is! A shoe on your desk!" "There is a shoe on my desk! Who left that there?"

And so it went. We just HAD to solve the mystery of the gold shoe! So I picked up the shoe and we compiled a list of our shoe schema. "Schema? What's schema?" my thoughtful kiddos asked. I explained to them it's what they already know and told them I hoped we could use our schema to find out just who this shoe belonged to!

We made a very long list of all the attributes they could come up with for the gold sparkly high heeled shoe they had found on my desk. When they discovered that the shoe had been worn we decided that it might be beneficial to our quest to list places this shoe may have been so we could narrow down our possible suspects. After they told me that I was completely absurd for thinking that the shoe may have been hiking before we made a list of places it possibly had been. Fancy parties, proms, restaurants, and, of course, weddings made the list. Then, the light bulbs started to go on. Since they knew I had been in weddings recently they pieced it together that it was my shoe after all.

And thank goodness they figured it out! I was able to tell them that they not only used their schema about shoes to solve the mystery; they also used their schema about me to figure out where that shoe had come from.


I loved this because I was able to use it for all three of my classes and they went into the lesson not knowing it was a lesson! They truly believed (even at 11!) that I needed help discovering just who's shoe this was. I love when a plan, even a last minute one, comes together to make a lesson work!