Making Connections
Readers are always making connections between what they read and their personal experience, their content knowledge, and the other text they have read or heard. The more gaps there are in background knowledge and experiences, or the greater the mismatch between those and the texts they read in school, the harder it will be to use their funds of knowledge in new texts they read. (Pinnell and Fountas 2009)
Making connections is often taught in a way that makes readers think it is an end in itself. You do not read in order to make a connection of some kind. Rather your memories and knowledge simply come alive; they are summoned as cued by text. When you prompt students to use what they know (background knowledge), other books they have read (text knowledge), or their previous experiences, you are helping them use this knowledge to further their understanding of the text they are reading.
Making Connections Helps Readers Learn How:
Think about how the text content relates to your own life
Relate background knowledge to reading
Think about how the text content relates to what is known about the world
Think about how the text content is like other books
Think about how the text is like or different from other books (fiction and nonfiction, plot, genre, writing style)
Sample Prompts Related to Comprehending:
What does this remind you of?
This book reminds me of (known example) Can you think why?
What do you know about that that helps you think about __?
Think of another book you have read that is like this
Think about what you already know about ____
Have you read about other characters like this?
Do you know a place like this?
Do you know anyone who is like a character in this book?
How does that (book, character, place) help you think about this book, character, place?
What do you think the writer will teach you about ___?