Wouldn’t it be nice if reading comprehension just magically happened?

Spoiler Alert: It doesn’t!

Although as adult readers we use these reading strategies to help us understand what we read without much effort, young readers need to be explicitly taught what the strategies are and how to use them. Over time, readers will learn to weave in and out of these strategies to fully comprehend the text that they're reading.

At the upper elementary level, students have likely been introduced to all seven strategies at one point or another, and they probably see the strategies modeled for them. You're going to continue to do that but there is going to be times when you're going to need to isolate each strategy throughout the school year. Of course, once a strategy is taught, it will still need to be reviewed, written, and continuously practiced.

Many teachers would agree that Making Connections is one of the easiest strategies for students to master, simply because students are likely already doing it without much effort.

Making Connections is a critical reading strategy that helps students make meaning of what they're reading. When they make connections to the text that they're reading, it's going to help them make sense of what they're reading, help them retain the information better, and help them engage more with the text itself.

In this episode, I will walk you through the basics of what the strategy is and how to effectively teach it to your students. 

In this episode You’ll Learn:

(Timestamps Shown)

• The background of three kinds of connections (3:14)

  • Text to Self Connections (3:53)

  • Text to Text Connections (4:29)

  • Text to World Connections (5:26)

• How to model the making connections strategy (6:20)

• Tips for book selection (8:51)

• The most challenging connection for students to make (9:28)

• How to give students meaningful practice (10:20)

• An amazing tool for providing authentic strategy practice for students (11:44)

• How to assess the students understanding of the reading strategy (12:53)

LINKS & RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE

Episode 41: Teaching Reading Comprehension Strategies

Book list for Making Connections (affiliate links)

Books for Teaching Text-to-Self:

• The Relatives Came

• Thank You, Mr. Falker

• Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

• The Stray Dog

Books for Teaching Text-to-Text:

• Thank You Mr. Falker / More Than Anything

• The Name Jar / One Green Apple

• The Relatives Came / When Lightning Comes in a Jar

• The Rough Faced Girl / Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters

Books for Teaching Text-to-World

• Where Does Garbage Go

• Fly Away Home

• Pop’s Bridge

• Smoky Night

Grab my FREE Making Connections Bookmark below:

Blog: 10 Anchor Charts for Teaching Students About Making Connections 

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TRANSCRIPT