Effective Ways to Help Students Make Text Connections When Reading

Getting students to move beyond literal reading comprehension to make text connections can sometimes be challenging. One major literacy focus in the classroom is making connections, where students are expected to move beyond text-self connections.

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Effective Ways to Help Students Make Text Connections When Reading

A text-to-self connection is probably the first connection students make with what they are reading. This is where students can make a connection from the text to their own experiences. For example: The boy in the book has a dog; I have a dog as well.

The other types of text connections are:

• Text-to-text
• Text-to-media
• Text-to-world

A text-to-text connection is where students make connections from the text they are reading to another text they have read. For example: This book’s theme is friendship, just as in the book we read last month.

A text-to-media connection is where students make text connections from the text they are reading to a piece of media they have consumed, be it TV shows, movies, music, or online content. For example: The mystery in this story reminds me of a crime documentary I watched last week.

Lastly, a text-to-world connection is where students make text connections from the text they are reading to larger global issues, things happening in the world around them, such as politics, history, or current events. For example: The robots in this book remind me of how scientists today are developing artificial intelligence and autonomous machines.

Making Text Connections: First Steps

Our big idea for this unit of study is “What makes a Global Citizen?” We will be reading a variety of texts to help spark engagement among the class in a social issue.

Before I ask students to make connections, we read over the piece together as a class. Then, students independently read the text again and annotate. They can annotate the margins or annotate on sticky notes if the reading is in a textbook.

Once students have been given time to think through the text, they are asked to dig deeper into it and relate it to other works and events using a graphic organizer.

Helping Students Understand Each Connection

Before you can help students make text connections, they must understand each one. We can’t expect to have students read a text and then ask them what the text-to-media connection is in the text if they don’t know what a text-to-media connection is in the first place.

Helping students understand each text connection can be done in a few ways:

Introduce each connection type with clear definitions and examples. You can use anchor charts or visual aids that define and illustrate these connections. For example, when I was teaching my class about making connections beyond the text-to-self connection, I came up with the idea of using a thermometer.

I had used other anchor charts and wanted to try something different. Since we live in Canada, it should be easy for students to relate temperature warmth to good ideas – especially since the temperatures are dropping during the first months of the school year, and summer feels like a distant memory.

Model the process by reading aloud and thinking through connections beyond personal experiences. For example, say, “This character’s journey reminds me of a book I’ve read where the main character also faced difficult challenges.”

Students will not innately connect the text to the media, world, or other texts. By thinking out loud, you can help students understand the thought process while reading a text. Teach them to pause when something seems familiar in a book – it might just be the connection you want them to learn.

Using Graphic Organizers to Help Make Text Connections

Once students understand the connections you want them to find, you need to give them a way to easily document their findings and give them a visual of what they’re looking for. You can do this through a graphic organizer in four sections with one section for each connection: text-to-self, text-to-text, text-to-media, and text-to-world.

As students read, they can fill in examples of connections they make in each category.

Another way to help students look for connections is to guide students with specific prompts that encourage deeper thinking beyond their personal experiences. Here are some examples:

• For text-to-text: “Does this book remind you of anything else you’ve read or seen?”
• For text-to-world: “How does this situation compare to global events?”
• For text-to-media: “Can you think of a movie, TV show, or news story that connects to your reading?”

Let Students Make Text Connections in Related Lessons

When students make text connections, it doesn’t have to happen solely in the lesson. Help students naturally make text-to-text connections by pairing texts with similar themes, topics or structures.

Pairing Novels With Non-Fiction

For example, pair a novel with a non-fiction article about the same event or content after reading it.

• Students might read the YA book, “Salaam, with Love” by Sara Sharaf Beg and then read a non-fiction article about Ramadan.
• Middle-grade students can enjoy “The Last Grand Adventure” by Rebecca Behrens and then read a non-fiction article about The Disappearance of Amelia Earhart.
• The novel “A Long Walk to Water” by Linda Sue Park is about Sudan during the Civil War of the 1980s. This story is inspired by true events told by two narrators: Salva in the past, fleeing the violence in his country, and Nya in the present, walking several hours a day to fetch water for her family. Students could read this book and then a non-fiction article about the current state of Sudan or another article about modern-day refugees.

Pairing Fiction With Non-Fiction

Students can also make a side-by-side comparison of a fictional story and a non-fiction book on the same issue, such as reading “The Book Thief” by Marcus Zusak and then “The Diary of Anne Frank,” both about the Holocaust.

Making Text Connections Through Current Events Learning

Use news articles, videos, Ted Talks, or even your Current Events unit to have students connect current events or themes to events or themes in the books they’re reading.

Use weekly news summaries or global issue reports to help students learn more about the world around them so that they can make connections. Learn more about current events in middle school here: 6 Fascinating Ideas For Teaching Current Events.

Let Students Work Together

Some students might not understand how to look for connections after the first few lessons, and that’s okay. Use the Think-Share-Pair strategy to get students working together to make text connections.

Divide students up into pairs or groups and give each a different connection to look for. Give each group a short text to go through so that they can practice using this skill together.

You could also use literature circles and assign roles where one student identifies text-to-world connections; another focuses on text-to-text connections; and a third looks at text-to-media connections. This will give students practice in making these connections through collaboration.

Lastly, make sure you provide opportunities for students to explore different genres and media related to what they’re studying in class. Let them choose between articles, videos, podcasts, and books so that they can see connections across different formats. This skill takes practice, and once students start to understand how to make text connections, the sky’s the limit.

Free Resource

Help your students organize their thoughts with these free Reading Strategies Graphic Organizers. This resource is a collection of six different graphic organizers to help students engage, connect and think critically about their reading. Students can write directly on the graphic organizers or collect their thoughts on sticky notes and use the graphic organizers as a study tool.

Included Reading Strategies:

• Plot
• Characters
• Making Connections
• Questions
• Predictions
• Before, During, After Reading

Download these free graphic organizers here.