Making Connections

 Another Reading skill students will be developing is making connections. In the past, on a basic level, this was often poorly used. Students would read a story, there would be a dog, and the student might share a random story about a dog they once saw. When used with a purpose, making a connections is the inner scaffolding students develop within their brains to build the foundations of their background knowledge, often referred to as schema. 

Here were some of our notes from class. We looked at the three meaningful ways we make connections:

- Text to Self - making connections to what we read and what we already know

- Text to Text - making connections to what we read and what we read in another text

- Text to World - making connections to something in the world, a video, online, an expert, or more

By having students write it out and draw out an image in our flex journals, we are creating a tool students can access and refer to when needed.

Making Connections helps us understand what we read. For example, Ms. Leom is sharing the book, I Survived the Joplin Tornado, 2011 by Lauren Tarshis. As we read, the character was thinking about his brother who was serving as a Navy Seal. The character talked about his throat feeling closed off. When we make a connection text to self and remember a time when our throat was closed off, like before we were going to cry, or we felt deeply worried about something, it can help us feel and appreciate our character's depths of feelings. It helps the story come alive in our imaginations. 

There are many strategies to help us build the foundation of reading. Making Connections in a meaningful way and developing these skills is important.