Chapter 6 in Tovani’s book taught me a lot about why it is important to make connections to the text we are reading and some strategies on how to teach this to our students. The concept that I really took away from this chapter was the section titled “Personal Knowledge or Personal Experience?” I never heard these two terms before in relation to making text connections. Personal knowledge is information readers have from stories, movies, television, books, anything that helps them acquire information secondhand. Personal experience is information readers gain from direct experience. Tovani said that when students can’t make a connection to something they are reading, even if they find it interesting, they often get bored, the reading loses their attention and they abandon the text. I think that this is something that I can bring with me into my grade 5 classroom because the curriculum will be more content-based and this is one way I can make sure that the students will want to learn about certain subjects.
Tovani listed several ways in which connections may help a reader. They include: 1. Make visuals in your head; 2. Make the text more interesting because you can interact with it; and 3. Bring meaning to the words instead of expecting the meaning to reside in the words.
I would share these three reasons with my students so that they can understand why it is important to be able to make connections with the text.
“The more connections a reader makes to the text, the better her comprehension is.”
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