In my 3rd grade class we have been
learning about making connections about text to self, text to text, and text to
world. The post I chose to write about
discusses different ways to have students think about connections in their
life. The post was entitled “Making
Connections” on the Hello Literacy blog, written on October 7. The first thing it shows is a picture rubric
that can be used to assess whether the student made a meaningful/ thoughtful
connection or needs improvement. It is a
great visual for students to use in order to see if they are on track. After teaching a connections lesson to a
small guided reading group I found that this rubric would have been helpful to
show the students in order to give them a visual aid/ reference to go back to
when writing their connections. The post also gave a link to other rubrics
that teachers can use from the website Teachers pay Teachers. The website has a number of free and easy
downloadable rubrics for schools to use.
Below is the rubric I found on the blog.
The blog continues to talk about the importance of
connections and how it can help students see different perspectives and make
text meaningful to their lives. For
example, in my guided reading group we were reading a book entitled “Regina’s
Ride.” It was all about a girl and her
family going on a bike ride, but the brother wanted to play video games. Once we finished reading the book we talked
about possible connections. One of the
boys in my group started talking about how he loves playing video games and
does not like riding his bike. It was
clear he was able to make a text to self connection from the reading. When he was able to see a similarity he became
more interested in what he was reading.
The blog provided a lot of great resources that
teacher’s can use. It also linked to
other blogs that provided various ideas to go along with making
connections. It was really helpful
reading why making connections is so important and how to make it more meaningful
for your students. I would recommend reading the post and visiting the other
blogs mentioned in the post!
