Make Connections

Make Connections: a beyond the text strategic action, readers connect the text to personal and world knowledge as well as to other texts.

Minilesson Resources

Making Connections: from tips-for-teachers.com, this link takes you to a unit for grades 1-2, as well as a unit for grades 3-4.  Book lists, printable lesson plans, and extension ideas are included.


Making Connections: from busyteacherscafe.com, these lessons are adapted from  Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement and Reading With Meaning: Teaching Comprehension in the Primary Grades.

Making Connections with Literacy Lessons: a collection of links to lessons for grades K-6 on making connections in fiction and nonfiction texts.  Most are linked to specific titles, but the author of this page notes that the lessons are easily adaptable to other texts.

Activating Schema: a four day unit on activating schema and making text to self connections from curriculumcorner.com.  Includes sample anchor chart and print-ables.

Anchor Charts

from http://mrsgilkison.weebly.com

from http://teacherificfun.blogspot.com/

from http://confessionsofateachingjunkie.blogspot.com

from http://thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com

via Wendy Penn on Pinterest.com

Grade Level Expectations

(from Continuum of Literacy Learning, Fountas and Pinnell, 2012)

PreK

• make text-to-self and text-to-text connections
• identify recurring characters or settings

Kindergarten

• make text-to-self and text-to-text (e.g., topic, ending, characters) connections
• recognize and apply attributes of recurring characters where relevant

First Grade

• make text-to-self and text-to-text connections
• bring background knowledge to the understanding of a text before, during, and after reading
• specify the nature of the connections (topic, content, type of story, writer)

Second Grade

• make text-to-self and text-to-text connections and demonstrate connection in writing
• bring background knowledge to the understanding of a text before, during, and after reading
• specify the nature of the connections (topic, content, type of story, writer)

Third Grade

• bring background knowledge to the understanding of a text before, during, and after reading
• make connections between the reader’s real-life experiences or feelings and people who live in diverse cultures, distant places, and different times
• interpret characters and events that are not within the reader’s experience
• make text-to-text connections and demonstrate connection in writing, particularly texts with diverse settings
• specify the nature of the connections (topic, content, type of story, writer)

Fourth Grade

• make connections between the reader’s real-life experiences or feelings and people who live in diverse cultures, distant places, and different times
• bring background knowledge to the understanding of a text before, during, and after reading
• bring knowledge from personal experiences to the interpretation of texts, particularly content related to preadolescents
• make text-to-text connections and demonstrate connection in writing, particularly texts with diverse settings
• specify the nature of the connections (topic, content, type of story, writer)
• make connections between characters in different texts (similar setting, type of problem, type of person)

Fifth Grade