Making Connections Between Texts, Self and The World

The Situation

You want your students to make connections between their reading and viewing to other media that have experienced.

The Solution

Making Connections is the process of making connections between personal contexts/experiences, similar text and worldly events and issues in society.

Making connections is a type of reading strategy that students need to learn. Through a variety of question types, they can begin to see that stories are connected. For example, if students are reading a gothic text, you can ask students, “what does this remind you of?” or “what other types of films have you seen that are similar? “

Check out this video below for further information:

What do students need to know?

Text to Text Connection: making connections between texts (Characters, setting, conflict, genres). Finding commonalities.

Text to World Connection: Making connections between stories and worldly events, history and contemporary events. For example, if you were studying Oliver Twist, it would be wise to observe and understand Victorian history.

Text to Self Connections: Making connections between the text and the reader’s own experiences, values and attitudes, beliefs and ideals.

Question Stems:  

• Does this remind you of anything?  Why?
• Is there a moment in this selection that make you think of something in your own life, another book, TV, movie..?
• Describe the historical context of the book/story.
• What connections can you make between the characters and the era which it is set?
• How do the characters experiences relate to your own experiences?

Here is a Choice Board that I created based around making connections for a novel study: