Teaching Resources
Center
Want to learn more or plan a lesson? Check out these links!
- Reading Comprehension Home
- Making Connections
- Fluency
- Determining Importance
- Inferring
- Metacognition
- Questioning
- Synthesizing
- Visualizing and Imagery
- Vocabulary and Word Identification
- Writing Across the Curriculum
Important UNCG Links
Making Connections
- Professional Books to help you develop lesson plans
- Children’s Books to use in lesson plans
- Some Helpful Web sites
Making Connections:
A Strategy for Teaching Reading Comprehension
Making Connections:
Making connections is when the student can connect the information from the material that they are reading with information from another source. Making connections to the text is important because it improves understanding and develops critical thinking skills. The ultimate goal for the making connections strategy is that students will use prior knowledge and experience to increase understanding of what they have been reading. There are three types of connections that can be made: text to self, text to text and text to world. Having background knowledge is important to the making connections teaching strategy. Since people are most knowledgeable about themselves, it is best to have students begin by making connections from the text to self, building the student’s knowledge from that point. Instruction for this strategy is designed around making connections from these eight features: genre, format, form, author, text structure, cue words, writing style, and literary features. There are some disadvantages to using the making connection reading strategy. The disadvantages are that students may make a connection, but the connection is not meaningful or the student may make a connection, but may not understand the importance of this connection (Harvey and Goudvis, 2000).
Reference:
Harvey, S. and Goudvis A.,(2000). Strategies That Work. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.
Quotes:
When students can make personal connections to the books they read,
they associate new meanings with the words, and the text becomes easier to read.
1(Doe, H.M., 2003, p. 151)
When I read Bean Trees, I made connections between my life and Taylor’s.
I wondered what I would do and how my family would act in the same situation. I connect everything I read to my life.
Thinking about my life helps me understand what I read.
2(Becky, grade 12 in Tovani, C., 2000, p. 63)
1Doe, H.M. (2003). Technology Through Children’s Literature. Portsmouth, NH: Teacher
Ideas Press. (372.64 Doe)
2 Tovani, C. (2000). I Read It but I Don’t Get It: Comprehension Strategies for Adolescent Readers. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.