I recently watched a documentary on the movement of music. Specifically communicating the different interpretations of music within cultures. The program highlighted a vast difference amongst funeral music within the Polynesian culture and the United States. The Polynesian funeral music was recognized by Americans as a happy melodic tune. Although, in the Polynesian context it was used as a melancholy overture symbolizing the mourning of a loved one.
The theory of schema organizing knowledge of the world and breaking it down for language comprehension can be highlighted based off of the 6 learning and remembering processes as defined from the research article, Role of the Reader’s Schema in Comprehension, Learning, and Memory by Richard C. Anderson. The article suggests that the roles of schema provide: pockets of compartments for textual information, identifying for the important part of the text, ability to make inferences, know how to recall information, analyzing of information and ability to recollect information based off of making educated guesses about missing information. The article defined strong evidence supporting the schema theory by analyzing different culture rituals of both Indian and American weddings. The outcome of the research defined strong connections and remembered practices within the samples own culture. The Americans memory and recall of their own wedding traditions surpassed the comprehension and recollection of the Indian’s wedding traditions as well as the Indian culture remembered and comprehended their own traditions but had trouble understanding the Americans.
Reflecting on my own methodologies and practices based off of the core elements of the schema theory activating students awareness, personal background and prior knowledge while creating and building room to store newly learned information may be illustrated by introducing the novel, Wonder by R. J. Palacio, to my Intensive learning support class (which I am in at the moment). Connecting the student’s personal disabilities; down syndrome to the disability of the main character, “Auggie’s” Treacher-Collins syndrome a deformity of a person’s face will stress the importance of recognizing the differences in each student while connecting the history of surgeries and doctors visits to ones of the main character’s Auggie’s. This will also support the students understanding of himself in addition to making connections, predictions, and inferences to the text. Using concrete examples of pictures, short films, and other visual resources to ones similar to Auggies will help stimulate verbal responses.
The schema theory and practice can be used in every learning opportunity. Even in or out of the classroom the model’s framework supports language comprehension!
Theory to Practice 