Schemas, Learning, and Neuroscience - Oh My! (Chapter 3)

    Supporting the thesis that instructional rigor must be intentionally planned, Karin Hess laments, that teachers often leave schema building out of their instructional planning. In chapter 3 of her book, Rigor by Design not Chance: Deeper Thinking Through Actionable Instruction and Assessment, she reminds readers that “Schemas become frameworks for learning new content and dramatically expanding a learner’s knowledge base” (p. 55) and are “crucial to students’ long-term memory retrieval and their ability to transfer learning to novel situations” (p.56). She goes on to summarize the research related to schemas and problem solving including its ties to neuroscience. Her writing also serves as a practical guide, giving examples of how instructors may build on the existing schemas students have, or build schema in each of five stages of the Actionable Assessment Cycle.
    One example described is a structural schema that could support student understanding and analysis of narrative text, an SWBS Chart: Somebody, Wanted, But, So. Using a graphic organizer or chart with a class, helping to identify these aspects of a story, helps them to apply this organization to future stories they read, and even allowing them to understand the necessary components of stories that they can then produce. I have seen the SWBS Chart previously, but it was called a Plot Relationships Chart (Uthink.edu). This version goes on to scaffold students to use the SWBS in order to write a summary paragraph about the narrative text. Interested in this resource, I was interested in finding out more about its origin.
    This strategy is attributed to James M. Macon, Diane Bewell, and Mary Ellen Vogt. It appeared in their 1990 book, Responses to Literature: K-8. I think it noteworthy that they designed strategies for students to respond to literature, providing 10 “classroom activities that encourage students to think more as they read and to focus on the literary elements of a story” (International Reading Association). As Karin Hess stresses, the goal of instructional rigor is to engage students in deeper thinking and transfer of what they learn to novel situations. The work of Macon, Bewell, and Vogt to design activities that support student thinking is the foundation of meaning-making and supporting schema building as we know it today.

Hess, K. (2023). Rigor by design, not chance: Deeper thinking through actionable instruction and assessment. ASCD.

International Reading Association (1999). Adolescent literacy: A position statement for the Commission on the adolescent literacy of the international reading association. .https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED437640.pdf

Uthinkedu.com (n.d.) Plot Relationships Chart. https://uthinkedu.com/files/resources/comprehension/Plot%20Relationship%20Chart.pdf