Text to Self Connections

In reading we have been talking about making connections as we read. There are 3 types of connections, text to self, text to world, and text to text. While we are reading, discussing and sharing information I ask the students to tell me about the connections they make. For example, What does that remind you of? (T-S) What do you already know about this topic? (T-W) Does it make you think of another book you have read? (T-T).

I thought it was pretty clear until a student asked, "I get how you text yourself, but I don't know how to text the world." Ummm, sometimes context is everything. Time-out, back up, lets talk about what I mean by "text."

I think so often we expect students to just know what we are talking about. There was no language barrier here, I am using words she understands, just not in the context of the way she uses these words everyday. In this student's schema, a text is a message she gets on her phone. The text I am talking about is actual written word, or in this case a story that we were reading. She was having trouble making connections, not because she did not know what a connection was, but because she was trying to make sense of her idea of phone messages and what that has to do with reading a story.

I think if we take time to give a little more background, or investigate where the students understanding is in the first place, we could get a lot further in their understanding.

Group Update

In Resource Reading, we are learning about Memoirs and using Patricia Polacco books to learn questioning and visualization strategies. We are also using the Fonatas and Pinnell Phonics and Word Study program.

Resource Math groups are using Investigations and following along with what the class is doing. We are seeing some good success with this different approach to math.

CM Reading groups are working on comprehension strategies of questioning, predicting, and analyzing the character's feelings to better understand the text.

CM Math groups are working on number concepts like making a ten, adding to get to 100, and finding factors.

We are making good progress and I will give more specific updates and strategies as we go along.