Model Connections to Text
Overview
Teachers sharing text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections models this schema building. As learners learn how to draw connections while reading a text, they activate additional cognitive processes, build on their Background Knowledge, and strengthen their reading comprehension. This strategy also supports the practice of culturally responsive teaching and can be used with other strategies that allow representation of all learners in the curriculum.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Watch how this elementary teacher models text-to-self connections with the support of sentence starters. After seeing this strategy with a read-aloud, students apply the sentence starters to draw their own connections to the text.
Design It into Your Product
Videos are chosen as examples of strategies in action. These choices are not endorsements of the products or evidence of use of research to develop the feature.
See how products like PaperPort Notes allow learners to annotate text and images. By recording their notes directly on each document, learners can easily access and revisit them at a later time. Digital reading products could adapt this type of annotation tool to include functionalities such as speech-to-text, audio recording, and drawing, as well as typing, to record connections on a text.
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Teacher Modeling & Support Strategies
Teachers can support language development by using and providing syntax that is appropriately leveled (e.g.
Teachers support language development by using and providing Vocabulary that is appropriately leveled (e.g., using word wall words).
Content that is provided in clear, short chunks can support students' Working Memory.
Building positive and trusting relationships with learners allows them to feel safe; a sense of belonging; and that their academic, cognitive, and social and emotional needs are supported.
Teaching students how to label, identify, and manage emotions helps them learn self-regulation skills.
Actively and authentically encouraging all students to seek support, ask questions, and advocate for what they believe in creates a safe space for risk-taking and skill development and supports a Sense of Belonging.
Teachers can help students understand that learning involves effort, mistakes, and reflection by teaching them about their malleable brain and modeling their own learning process.
Providing feedback that focuses on the process of developing skills conveys the importance of effort and motivates students to persist when learning.
By talking through their thinking at each step of a process, teachers can model what learning looks like.
Maintaining consistent classroom routines and schedules ensures that students are able to trust and predict what will happen next.
Reading aloud regularly exposes students to new and familiar vocabulary and texts.
Reading aloud books about skills children are learning provides another model for their development.
Providing students a voice in their learning is critical for making learning meaningful.
Wait time, or think time, of three or more seconds after posing a question increases how many students volunteer and the length and accuracy of their responses.
