Teaching and practicing reading strategies with students encourages active reading and critical thinking. When students successfully use reading strategies while reading, they are more engaged, and therefore better comprehend what they are reading. Making connections
This free making connections set of graphic organizers can be used as you encourage your children to connect what they know with what they are reading.
I tend to create a lot of work pages, posters, reference sheets and more for my friends. When I do, I like to use a font that sort of kicks it up a notch. I've even been known to throw some wacky font in my planbook to match the activity, a sure sign I need to get a life! I thought I would share with you my go to place for amazing, FREE fonts. It's a site called dafont.com. I love it like I love chocolate! If you need a font, they have it. It's especially great for teachers. It's where I got the different fonts I used on the cover of my anchor chart binder. I wish I could show you some of the fonts I have downloaded, but Blogger won't let me. However, these are some that I use a lot: Janda Scrapgirl smiley monster doctor soos bold mr and mrs popsicle action jackson madscience print clearly There are tons of them, and you can pick how you search for them. You can pick by style, theme, holiday, etc. I just downloaded a font called Autumn Gifts. I want to make a fall subway art poster for my dining room later, and this will be a great font for it. I have a PC with Windows. This is how installing the font works for me. Once you find the font you want: Click "download" When the next screen pops up, click on "Open" Another screen will pop up with the file in it. Sometimes there is more than one file for the font. Click the one that says "True type font file." Then, click "Install" It only takes a second and then you can close all the windows that opened. At this point, it should be listed in your fonts. If you get a chance, visit dafont.com. It's fun just to browse around. If you find a great font, please come back and share it's name and how you might use it! I can't tell you how many times seeing a certain font has inspired an idea rather than having an idea and then searching for the font. There are so many, it's hard to keep up with all they offer! By the way, this is completely personal recommendation. dafont.com knows nothing of me or my little blog. :-) *I'm taking the weekend off from blogging, so I will see you all on Monday. Have a great weekend! And, thanks so much for stopping by.
Hello! My students and I are working on Making Connections to Text right now. So, I made 4 different graphic organizers to use with them. They include sentence stems, and/or icons to help students make connections from T-T (text-to-text), T-S (text-to-self), and T-W (text-to-world). Click on the image below to get your copy. I hope they are useful!
Hexagonal thinking is a great way to get students making connections! This template just needs you to add terms and have students cut them out after printing! Student instructions are editable! STUDENT INSTRUCTIONS: → DIVIDE THE HEXAGONS EVENLY BETWEEN YOUR GROUP. → PUT ONE TILE DOWN TO START → GO AROUND THE GROUP HAVE EACH PERSON GO ONE AT A TIME TO ADD TERMS THAT CONNECT TO WHAT HAS ALREADY BEEN PLACED DOWN → IF YOU PLACE A TERM YOU MUST EXPLAIN HOW IT CONNECTS AND ASK THE GROUP IF THEY AGREE OR DISAGREE. BE SURE TO SEE IF ANYONE HAS ANYTHING TO ADD. → THE GOAL IS TO MAKE AND EXPLAIN CONNECTIONS BETWEEN TERMS. → TERMS MAY CONNECT TO MULTIPLE TERMS, TRY AND CONNECT AS MANY AS POSSIBLE. → HAVE A TERM THAT DOESN’T CONNECT TO ANYTHING? START A NEW MAP WITH THAT TERM AT THE CENTER.
Who doesn't love a good anchor chart? Now - an anchor chart with a purpose? That takes a little inspiration, and that's what this post is all about! We all teach students about making connections at some point during the school year, so I wanted to give you some great examples o
Every teacher has had that moment that you mention something like a birthday, a pet, a flower, practically anything and all these hands go up to tell you that “my neighbor’s cousin’s friend had a birthday yesterday!” Kids can always connect whatever you are saying to something else in their lives even if it is […]
We are two teachers from Las Vegas that would like to share our ideas and experiences from our classroom. Hope you enjoy!
Reinforce text connections using picture books and oral questioning (questions
I never really used anchor charts and if I did they were just plain old boring. I never realized they were boring until I discovered pinterest. I thought "Man, my anchor charts are blaaah, compared to these!" So the creative person in me said "Move over sista, it's time for the real star to shine!" HAHAHA I really don't think THAT highly of myself, maybe just a little. This year our school mandated that we have anchor charts displayed in our classroom AND it needed to be student interacted. Today I introduced use your schema to make connections strategy from CAFE. I pre-made this anchor chart before introducing it to the class. I then introduced each connection one by one using several examples and filling in the pre-made anchor chart. This was our end result. I made a worksheet so students can make connections when they read to self. Click on the picture to grab yours for free. I really love how COLOR makes a huge difference and how it catches the students attention. Here is another example of an anchor chart I made during math instruction. I place the anchor charts on the wall so that students can refer back to them during the week. Once we move on to a new content I switch out the old ones to new anchor charts. Here are pictures of our Science and Math walls. Laters, Mrs. Concepcion
Who doesn't love a good anchor chart? Now - an anchor chart with a purpose? That takes a little inspiration, and that's what this post is all about! We all teach students about making connections at some point during the school year, so I wanted to give you some great examples o
Increasing describing of items and activities can be difficult. Here are some ideas of ways to teach it and keep students engaged.
Who doesn't love a good anchor chart? Now - an anchor chart with a purpose? That takes a little inspiration, and that's what this post is all about! We all teach students about making connections at some point during the school year, so I wanted to give you some great examples o
Teaching and practicing reading strategies with students encourages active reading and critical thinking. When students successfully use reading strategies while reading, they are more engaged, and therefore better comprehend what they are reading. Making connections
Last month my 8th graders wrapped up their memoir book studies! Our culminating project was two parts: An individual assignment in which students took on analyzing one or more aspects of their me…
Making connections when reading these suggested picture books will help your students use their prior experiences to make sense of the text.
Looking for some ways to engage students in American literature? Check out tips for working with technology, rhetoric, and poetry!
This study closely looks at a brain with autism and brain without.
Making connections is a strategy that readers use to better understand the text they are reading. It's one of the most powerful strategies your readers have in their tool belts. Readers use their prior knowledge to make a text to self, text to text, or text to world connection to what they are reading. I have put together some lessons and activities for the elementary classroom that can be helpful in teaching this valuable reading strategy. The first thing you want to do is make sure students have a basic understanding of the word connection. You can start with this simple opening activity. Put four of the provided cards into a bag. Pull them out and show them to students. Ask them what the connection is between the objects in the bag. Have a conversation about how they are connected. Then talk about any connections they have to those objects. It's a very basic way of discussing what connections are. You can then relate that to making connections in a book. I included five sets of cards that you could use each day of the week or you could split the students into groups and have them discuss connections with their groups. I would model describing the connection on the card above, because students will have to describe their connections in writing during the unit. You could laminate this to use again. The posters I included cover the three different types of connections that readers can make. For the anchor chart, I also included sentence frames for students to refer to throughout the unit when describing their connections. Text to Self Connection Craft I would explicitly teach one type of connection each day at first. You can uses these crafts for students to record their connections each day. Lots of modeling will probably be needed. Text to Text Connection Craft Text to World Connection Craft Once students have learned the different types of connections, you can go into making them understand that you can make different types of connections within one text. Give each student the 3 strips for the different types of connections they can make to a text. You can then make them into a chain connecting these cards to the name of the text you read. Close your lesson by summarizing the connections made on the cards above. This is a great visual for students to understand how making connections works. I always like for my students to have these little hats to wear while practicing the strategy. They also can get these bookmarks and badges. Always use some sort of exit ticket to close your lesson. This is where you will get an additional assessment to guide your instruction for the next day, as well as your small strategy groups. I like to always include additional graphic organizers for additional lessons on making connections, as well as for small groups and centers. I made them for the three different types of connections. You can use these case files for your whole group lessons or during small group teacher table. After you have taught how these work, these are great for a literacy center! Finally, a fun Friday activity we love to do are Brown Bag Book Clubs! You fill the bag with popcorn and have students fill out the graphic organizer over a read aloud. They then get into groups to discuss their connections with their book club, as well as to review other strategies previously learned. I hope these making connections activities are helpful for your readers! You can find it HERE or by clicking any of the images in this post. If you own the Reading Comprehension Bundle, it has been added there, too, so be sure to download it in your My Purchases tab. Happy reading!
Discuss allegory in The Crucible by Arthur Miller with this lesson plan at ❰StoryboardThat❱ ✩. Also includes student activities for plot, themes, & character analysis.
Reading novels is a staple in every level in our World Language department. Below are two new approaches I used with reading a novel. 1. Connecting to the character in the story. This year is the first time my students are reading the TPRS Publishing novel, Frida Kahlo, by Kristy Placido. Before we started reading, I gave them the paper below. They read the statements and responded to the scenarios on another paper that had 15 blank squares. The students did NOT know that these statements were events that happened in Frida Kahlo's life or were similar experiences (such as #9 & #10), that we were soon going to read in the novel. I created similar events (#9 & #10) in order to provide examples that are plausible for my students. (Ex: Frida called Diego out on his relationship with an art model when he was painting at her school. The possibility of our school commissioning an artist to paint a mural on our school wall is very unlikely so my example is the student's boss, who is married, has a romantic relationship with another person.) After each chapter that mentioned one, or more, of the examples in the chart, we discussed the students' answers and compared them to Frida Kahlo's actions. If what the student had written was similar to Frida's actions, they circled the square. If it was different than Frida's actions, they drew a bold "X" over the square. After discussing all 15 examples, we were quickly able to identify which students could relate to events in Frida's life. 2. Checking comprehension with Higher Order Thinking There are (a few) times that I assign homework for my students to read a chapter or two from the novel we are reading together in class. A twist on checking their comprehension of the chapter (and also to see if they read the chapter), is to give them the 4-1-1 Comprehension Check. To create a 4-1-1 Comprehension Check, you will need to choose 4 sentences from the chapter(s) that the students read for homework (or that they read in class). Then add a sentence of something that DIDN'T happen in the text, but is something that could have happened. Write another sentence of something that DIDN'T happen and IS NOT a logical option of what could have happened in the chapter. 4-1-1 Comprehension Check - ch6 of Frida Kahlo Type the sentences in random order. The students have to find the 4 sentences with information that occurred in the text they read. (If they are sentences with a clear chronological order, ask students to put them in order.) For the remaining two sentences, students determine which one didn't happen but could have, and which sentence is not a logical choice of a possible event in the book and then they must DEFEND their reason for their choices with information in that particular chapter or previous chapters. The above example is from chapter 6 of "Frida Kahlo". The two sentences that are NOT from the novel are B and E. The book does not mention that Frida told her sister about the rats, but since Frida was closest to her younger sister and they spent a lot of time together, it would be a logical possibility that Frida would tell her sister about the rats. The sentence that is not a logical possibility is E because if students read the chapter they know that Frida was hiding the rats from her mother. Frida would not want to give the rats to her mother as a gift because her mother would not agree to permit Frida to continue caring for them. Another chapter in Frida Kahlo that is perfect for a 4-1-1 Comprehension Check is chapter 7 that lists the mischievous acts of Frida and her friends at la Escuela Nacional Preparatoria. This 4-1-1 Comprehension Check is beneficial in that students have to separate fact from fiction. If they read the chapter and understood what they were reading, it should be a fairly simple task for them to find the two sentences that are not from the text. The higher order thinking skills are needed to determine which sentence is/is not a possibility, and then defend the answer using information already known about the character or the plot. The 4-1-1 Comprehension Check can be used as a formative or summative assessment.
Have you ever heard a teacher say, “Just sound out the word,” to a struggling young speller? Or maybe you’ve said those words to a student yourself? This simple strategy frequentl…
In this series we'll examine what research says about whether we should teach knowledge or reading comprehension strategies (spoiler alert: we should teach both!). Then we'll look at specific ways to teach the following in
Hello! My students and I are working on Making Connections to Text right now. So, I made 4 different graphic organizers to use with them. They include sentence stems, and/or icons to help students make connections from T-T (text-to-text), T-S (text-to-self), and T-W (text-to-world). Click on the image below to get your copy. I hope they are useful!
Inspire You strives to enable individuals, organisations, and helping practitioners in their pursuit of well-being and success. We are your one-stop shop for achieving consistent results, assisting you and your team in feeling inspired, engaged, and
Making connections is a strategy that readers use to better understand the text they are reading. It's one of the most powerful strategies your readers have in their tool belts. Readers use their prior knowledge to make a text to self, text to text, or text to world connection to what they are reading. I have put together some lessons and activities for the elementary classroom that can be helpful in teaching this valuable reading strategy. The first thing you want to do is make sure students have a basic understanding of the word connection. You can start with this simple opening activity. Put four of the provided cards into a bag. Pull them out and show them to students. Ask them what the connection is between the objects in the bag. Have a conversation about how they are connected. Then talk about any connections they have to those objects. It's a very basic way of discussing what connections are. You can then relate that to making connections in a book. I included five sets of cards that you could use each day of the week or you could split the students into groups and have them discuss connections with their groups. I would model describing the connection on the card above, because students will have to describe their connections in writing during the unit. You could laminate this to use again. The posters I included cover the three different types of connections that readers can make. For the anchor chart, I also included sentence frames for students to refer to throughout the unit when describing their connections. Text to Self Connection Craft I would explicitly teach one type of connection each day at first. You can uses these crafts for students to record their connections each day. Lots of modeling will probably be needed. Text to Text Connection Craft Text to World Connection Craft Once students have learned the different types of connections, you can go into making them understand that you can make different types of connections within one text. Give each student the 3 strips for the different types of connections they can make to a text. You can then make them into a chain connecting these cards to the name of the text you read. Close your lesson by summarizing the connections made on the cards above. This is a great visual for students to understand how making connections works. I always like for my students to have these little hats to wear while practicing the strategy. They also can get these bookmarks and badges. Always use some sort of exit ticket to close your lesson. This is where you will get an additional assessment to guide your instruction for the next day, as well as your small strategy groups. I like to always include additional graphic organizers for additional lessons on making connections, as well as for small groups and centers. I made them for the three different types of connections. You can use these case files for your whole group lessons or during small group teacher table. After you have taught how these work, these are great for a literacy center! Finally, a fun Friday activity we love to do are Brown Bag Book Clubs! You fill the bag with popcorn and have students fill out the graphic organizer over a read aloud. They then get into groups to discuss their connections with their book club, as well as to review other strategies previously learned. I hope these making connections activities are helpful for your readers! You can find it HERE or by clicking any of the images in this post. If you own the Reading Comprehension Bundle, it has been added there, too, so be sure to download it in your My Purchases tab. Happy reading!
Hexagonal thinking is a great way to get students making connections! This template just needs you to add terms and have students cut them out after printing! Student instructions are editable! STUDENT INSTRUCTIONS: → DIVIDE THE HEXAGONS EVENLY BETWEEN YOUR GROUP. → PUT ONE TILE DOWN TO START → GO AROUND THE GROUP HAVE EACH PERSON GO ONE AT A TIME TO ADD TERMS THAT CONNECT TO WHAT HAS ALREADY BEEN PLACED DOWN → IF YOU PLACE A TERM YOU MUST EXPLAIN HOW IT CONNECTS AND ASK THE GROUP IF THEY AGREE OR DISAGREE. BE SURE TO SEE IF ANYONE HAS ANYTHING TO ADD. → THE GOAL IS TO MAKE AND EXPLAIN CONNECTIONS BETWEEN TERMS. → TERMS MAY CONNECT TO MULTIPLE TERMS, TRY AND CONNECT AS MANY AS POSSIBLE. → HAVE A TERM THAT DOESN’T CONNECT TO ANYTHING? START A NEW MAP WITH THAT TERM AT THE CENTER.
Who doesn't love a good anchor chart? Now - an anchor chart with a purpose? That takes a little inspiration, and that's what this post is all about! We all teach students about making connections at some point during the school year, so I wanted to give you some great examples o
Help your students make meaningful connections with MagiCore Learning's resources and activities designed to improve comprehension and critical thinking skills. Download our resources and improve student learning!
Making connections to the text is just one way we can help learners understand what they are reading. As readers connect the text to self, to other texts, and to events that have or are happening in the world, they have a clearer focus for using many of the other comprehension reading strategies. We want ... Read More about Making Connections – Reading Strategy
Found this great text connection idea in Mailbox Magazine (great WONDERFUL magazine for teachers!) last year and pulled it out again because my kids enjoyed it so much. Have the students write down a text connections that they make during their independent reading time on a slip of construction paper, share, and then categorize them into the three text connections. Once categorized, connect them to create paper chains:) I love the visual "connection" picture that it makes in the kids heads. Since I teach 5th grade, the kids usually come to me knowing these three connections already, but I found this to be a great review lesson and a continual, visual reminder to be making them while we are reading. I modeled this strategy with Young Zeus by Brian Karas since there are so many connections you can make with it and the story is very engaging. We are also currently looking at Traditional Literature so it fit right in! Text-to-world connections are easy since so many things in our society today have to do with Greek gods and goddess names (i.e. Poseidon, Hades, Olympus, Zeus, Titans). Text-to-self is easy also - in the story he deals with understanding why his mother hasn't been there for his life - why adults aren't able to always do what they want to be doing, and he and his siblings have arguments - both things that many kids can relate with. Text-to-text was fun because this particular group of kids has been VERY interested in Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Roman, Ancient Greek stories (i.e. Percy Jackson) and is we made TONS of connections between what many of them are currently reading and this story.
Help students understand the difference between text connections that are vague surface connections and deep connections. This connections anchor chart illustrates the difference in a way that students can understand. A free interactive notebook entry is also included!
Every teacher has had that moment that you mention something like a birthday, a pet, a flower, practically anything and all these hands go up to tell you that “my neighbor’s cousin’s friend had a birthday yesterday!” Kids can always connect whatever you are saying to something else in their lives even if it is […]
We are two teachers from Las Vegas that would like to share our ideas and experiences from our classroom. Hope you enjoy!
Increase reading comprehension with text connections! Seven engaging activities for
I never really used anchor charts and if I did they were just plain old boring. I never realized they were boring until I discovered pinterest. I thought "Man, my anchor charts are blaaah, compared to these!" So the creative person in me said "Move over sista, it's time for the real star to shine!" HAHAHA I really don't think THAT highly of myself, maybe just a little. This year our school mandated that we have anchor charts displayed in our classroom AND it needed to be student interacted. Today I introduced use your schema to make connections strategy from CAFE. I pre-made this anchor chart before introducing it to the class. I then introduced each connection one by one using several examples and filling in the pre-made anchor chart. This was our end result. I made a worksheet so students can make connections when they read to self. Click on the picture to grab yours for free. I really love how COLOR makes a huge difference and how it catches the students attention. Here is another example of an anchor chart I made during math instruction. I place the anchor charts on the wall so that students can refer back to them during the week. Once we move on to a new content I switch out the old ones to new anchor charts. Here are pictures of our Science and Math walls. Laters, Mrs. Concepcion
Reinforce text connections using picture books and oral questioning (questions
This is a set of three worksheets designed to guide students through drawing inferences about a story by making connections to their own experience, to other texts they have read, and/or to what they know about the world. Drawing Inferences Through Text-to-Self/Text/World Connections by Nancy Brown ...
Who doesn't love a good anchor chart? Now - an anchor chart with a purpose? That takes a little inspiration, and that's what this post is all about! We all teach students about making connections at some point during the school year, so I wanted to give you some great examples o
