Have you ever read a sentence or paragraph in isolation, not connected to a specific purpose or within a text, and it didn’t make sense to you? In Chapter 5 of Cobb & Kallus (2011), Richard C. Anderson used the following example taken from Bransford and McCarrell (1974) to demonstrate how a reader’s background knowledge affects comprehension:

            “The notes were sour because the seams split.” (p.98)

Did some questions come to mind as you read that? Perhaps you are wondering what notes? Why would notes have seams? What made the seams split? This sentence standing alone, without any frame of reference, might not make sense. But when Anderson adds the word “bagpipe” as a hint to the meaning of the sentence, understanding becomes clear to readers who are familiar with bagpipes. Schema refers to background knowledge, previous experiences and how they are organized in the mind. Since each reader has unique and personalized schema, the understanding drawn from the same text may not be the same. “Schema theory highlights the fact that often more than one interpretation of a text is possible” (p.100). When a student’s schema is activated prior to reading, there is a higher chance of comprehension and retention of the information presented in the text because the student has previous knowledge to connect with the new knowledge.

Listed below are the six functions of schemata which were suggested by Anderson & Pichert (Anderson, 1978; Anderson & Pichert, 1978).

• A schemata provides ideational scaffolding for assimilating text information. It provides a niche, or slot for information. (Cobb & Kallus, 2011, p.101)
• A schemata facilitates selection allocation of attention. It helps readers know what aspects of the text are most important and where to place their attention.
• A schemata enables inferential elaboration. It helps the reader infer, or read between the lines, additional information that is not explicitly provided in the text.
• A schemata allows orderly searches of memory. It provides the reader with a guideline or roadmap, so to speak, to follow as he pulls up previous experiences.
• A schemata facilitates editing and summarizing. It helps the reader disregard unimportant information and compile a mental list of the main points.
• A schemata permits inferential reconstruction. It assists the reader with making assumptions to fill in open spots or missing information. (Cobb & Kallus, 2011, p.102)

These functions highlight the importance of schema in regards to comprehension and how the lack of activating a student’s background knowledge might affect his understanding.

In Chapter 6 of Cobb & Kallus (2011), John D. Bransford comments on schema theory and suggests that educators should not only activate students’ schema prior to reading, but also assist children in acquiring new schema. Bransford uses an illustration about airports to demonstrate that some students don’t have enough background knowledge, so just activating what they have isn’t enough. If the text states that a woman doesn’t want to wear her silver jewelry to the airport, but doesn’t explain why, some students will assume it’s because she is afraid the jewelry will be stolen and others might think she doesn’t want to have to take it off to walk through the metal detectors. However, if students don’t have any personal experiences with airports, they won’t have any schema to activate so neither of those understandings will present itself. The teacher might tell students that airports have metal detectors, but what if a student doesn’t know what a metal detector is or doesn’t know how metal detectors are used at airports? Bransford says, “The point I want to emphasize is that the goal of this instruction is to help the child develop a more sophisticated schema rather than simply to activate a schema that already exists” (p.115). Teachers need to be intentional about helping students make connections between what they already know and the new information being presented. Consideration should be made for the diversity of the students in each class—cultural, economic, language, etc. These differences are factors in the types of background knowledge students will use to comprehend the text, so educators should provide assistance in acquiring new schema when necessary.

Children will not naturally synthesize what they read with what they already know. Teachers must provide appropriate questioning strategies to activate students’ prior knowledge to help them make the needed connections. In addition, it’s vital that teachers provide students opportunities to develop background knowledge before content is presented if the topic is not familiar to them. Also, for students to remember what they’ve learned, the information should be presented in a way that demonstrates relationships between the pieces of new learning instead of presenting each individual idea in isolation. In conclusion, understanding schema theory and applying that understanding to classroom practices is an active part of teaching reading since students’ comprehension is influenced and, at times, founded on their previous experiences and background knowledge.