For most adults, "The Grand Scheme of Things" refers to our long-term plans for the future. School-age children think up schemes for designing secret forts out of boxes, putting a spider in the teacher's desk drawer, or getting into mommy's makeup (so they can use mascara for lip gloss and layer on some forgotten blue eye shadow from the '80s).
However, in the literacy world, the similar word "schema" refers to all past knowledge and memories we bring with us to read a book. It is how the brain actually organizes its mental understanding of the world. Picture your babies' brains as small twigs from trees. They are thin, barely graduated from the definition of "stick." With every experience, your babies' brains grow, producing thicker tree trunks and tiny buds of new limbs. As soon as your babies are born, their "trees of schemas" grow.
When your twins experience comfort when crying, their "comfort schema tree branch" grows longer and thicker. When your babies experience daily routines and bedtime rituals, their "routine/ritual schema tree branch" grows. When you smile and laugh at your babies and they smile and laugh back, their "conversation/safety/mommy schema tree branch" grows.
Good readers have big schemas. In order to get meaning from a text, we must bring meaning to the text. Take a college chemistry book, for example. Open it to any page and try to read it. My schema for college chemistry is minuscule! I understand nothing when looking at a chemistry book. The only bud on my tree of chemistry understanding is when I go down the vitamin aisle and pick up folic acid. However, others may use chemistry daily in their work, and therefore they have a huge, fat schema for chemistry with lots of strong outshoots from the branch. Lightning could strike their "chemistry schema tree branch" and barely leave a mark. A thousand tire swings could hang from their "chemistry schema tree branch," and it would still be strong enough for a thousand more.
Imagine trying to teach a blind person what a sunset looks like or how funny a clown looks. This is how "in the dark" it feels when reading a book when there aren't any past meaningful experiences about the topic -- just a bunch of meaningless jabber. So, parents, allow your child to have experiences. This doesn't have to mean that you take the kids to Disney World to learn about Cinderella, to Africa to learn about zebras, or to California to learn about giant sequoias. Simply expose your twins to life around them in a safe way. At age-appropriate times, let them splash in a puddle, see the animals in the zoo, point out birds in the sky, and use "adult talk" ("Look at the dog!") instead of "baby talk" ("Wookie at the dawggie!"). In this way, when hearing a book about a bird, they have a "bird schema tree branch" to pluck ideas from about the birds in the stories. And when your twins hear new ideas about birds, their "bird branch" gets stronger, and they are able to understand more text, which will help them become better readers.
So talk to your twins a lot; you will always have things to say. Fortunately, you have a lot of time before they reach the dreaded age when they will appear as though they aren't listening, even though they really are!
[NOTE: This article is one of many from parent educator and mom of twins (and a twingle), Holly Engel-Smothers, who will be sharing her wisdom and expertise on the subject of reading through this "Literacy for All" column, which will appear on a regular basis on TwinsTalk.]