Creating Connections

Making connections while reading helps readers to construct a personal understanding of the text. The reading comes alive and becomes meaningful. Reading workshop in first through fourth grades has found students making connections to both fiction and nonfiction reading. First grade students are learning how to make text to self-connections to fiction books. Spark by Kallie George is an example of a fiction book read aloud to first graders in order for them to make a connection to the main character, a dinosaur. The students learned they could find points of connection to a character that is very different than them, even to one that is a dinosaur! In fact, students could really relate to the fact that Spark, the little dinosaur, makes mistakes and is careless, even when he is trying hard to be careful.

Second graders are practicing the strategy of making connections with books at school and at home. Their Talk, Write, Draw home reading assignment has recently focused on this strategy. One second grader made a connection to a chapter called "A Swim" in Frog and Toad Are Friends.  The student explained that the chapter ended in a tragedy, which is not the way children’s books should end. The “tragedy” of this chapter was that Toad’s fear of the animals laughing at him when he wore his bathing suit came true- they did laugh. We agreed that most children’s stories do end happily; this one had an ambiguous ending that led to a great discussion. Ultimately, we acknowledged that our ability to make a connection to the text can often help us understand the predictable nature of certain kinds of books.

Third and fourth graders are reading nonfiction and finding that it is also important to make connections to factual reading. Articles and books about modern China are allowing third grade students to compare their lives in our part of the world to the way people live in China. In researching the Lenape Indians, fourth grade students have not just recorded their facts, but responded to each fact with a connection, reaction or question. The result is that information learned is both understood and interpreted.