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**Miss Ciccotelli and Miss Duzan's Comprehension Strategy Wiki**

**Making Connections **
==== "Making Connections" is a reading comprehension strategy that helps students activate their prior knowledge and make a variety of connections or associations to the text that they are reading. There are three kinds of reading connections: ====
 * ==== Text-Text: students make connections between different texts ====
 * Example: A student may make Text-Text connections after reading multiple versions of a single folk tale, such as //The Little Red Hen//. While reading a new version of the tale, the student may make connections to alternate versions that s/he has read.
 * ==== Text-Self: students make connections between the text and themselves, including but not limited to their personal opinions and experiences ====
 * Example: A student who takes dance classes may make a Text-Self connection when reading a book involving a character who loves to dance ballet.
 * Video Example: The following video includes several examples of students who are making Text-Self connections to a series of books written by Patricia Polacco.
 * media type="custom" key="7670471"
 * ==== Text-World: students make connections between the text and the world around them, including but not limited to events in history, current events, the physical world, and individuals in society ====
 * Example: A student who has visited the various monuments in Washington D.C. may make a Text-World connection when reading a non-fiction text about these monuments. A student who has studied World War II may make a Text-World connection to a text that is set in the World War II era.

 What are the benefits?

 * "Making Connections" helps students activate prior knowledge and connect this knowledge to the texts that they are reading.
 * As students use the Making Connections strategy, students are more able to comprehend and recall the text that they are reading. To make a connection, students must first comprehend the text that they are reading. The new knowledge that students gain through initial comprehension is reinforced when students connect prior knowledge to the new knowledge. Finally, by connecting to the text, students are more likely to remember the content of the text.
 * "Making Connections" promotes metacognition as students must recognize when they are connecting their experiences to the text. Students must also classify their experiences as Text-Text, Text-Self, or Text-World.


 * Approach to Teaching- Sketch and Label Connections **

(Click to Download)

Students use written words or pictoral representations to express their connections to a given text. Students are given index cards/sticky notes to either draw or write the connections that they make while reading a story. Students then classify each connection as "text-text", "text-self", or "text-world".

==== We chose Making Connections as our comprehension strategy because we have previously observed our students making informal connections to readings independently. Therefore, we believe that this reading comprehension strategy is developmentally appropriate for our students. The teaching approach that we chose, Sketch and Label, fits our class well because some of our students are still struggling to write, while others are fluent writers. By allowing our students to use the Sketch and Label approach, we are accommodating all levels of our students' abilities without limiting our most advanced students. We also believed that allowing students to draw their connection would motivate our visual learners. ====