Making Connections: Our Own Daily Lives and Experiences
"Smith (1975) defined comprehension as 'relating new experiences to the already known... Anything [readers] cannot relate to what they know already will not make sense; it will be nonsense"(Gill 108).
"Using the think-aloud strategy, Mrs. Hope guided the students to categorize their connections by modeling text-to-self, text-to-text, or text-to-world connections. Through this categorization, students better understood ways in which to connect and make meaning with texts" (Gregory 516).
Comprehension is inclusive of the reader, the text, and the purpose. Why are you reading a certain piece of literature? More importantly, why are you trying to make your classroom read it? What sets this work apart, i.e. what makes it worthy of instruction?
There has been a large push recently toward integrating text into every aspect of a student's day, beyond just Language Arts class and into Science, Math, and every mundane activity from lining up to looking around a classroom. Children are exposed to text rich environments, and need to learn quickly the importance of text in order to learn most effectively. This can be modeled by parents and teachers, from writing a letter to writing memos to sending emails.
However, when it comes to making children most invested in improving their reading, students have to be presented with passages that are INTERESTING TO THEM. They have to be able to connect it to something they've done, read, heard, or seen in order to assimilate it with their current knowledge or schema of the world. This idea of text connections can be introduced as early into schooling as kindergarten, perhaps through a catchy, easily memorizable song like the one shown above.
Gill, Sharon. The Comprehension Matrix: A Tool for Designing Comprehension Instruction.
Gregory, Anne and Mary Cahill. Kindergarteners Can Do It, Too! Comprehension Strategies for Early Readers.
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