Making Connections
In Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis’ Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension to Enhance Learning the authors explain their reading strategies to build bridges from what students know to new knowledge. As I read through Chapter 6 on Making Connections I thought of many ways we could use technology to build those bridges.
The first kind of connection the authors wrote of making note of items in text that reminded students of something they already knew. This first building block in the bridge discusses using stories close to the students’ lives and experiences to make text-to-self connections. I believe this connection making is akin to Bloom’s Taxonomy Analysis level in which students compare and contrast what they know.
In a lesson using text-to-self connections, students are to mark a “R” in their text near items that remind them of something from their lives or experiences. Using technology to mark those reminders, this could be done in a group with the SMART board where the passage is projected and the students write “R” on the board near reminder items. Then in a chart on another SMART Notebook page the students could chart and share what those text-to-self connections. Individually, students could use the Insert Comment tool in Microsoft Word to note those reminders. Another group or individual lesson could be to develop an Inspiration or Kidspiration web of connections. These methods could be used with e-Books or other online passages. Once students are comfortable with this strategy, it could be extended by asking students to share their connections online through a group blog or message board.
The next step in making connections is making text-to-text connections where students are to mark what reminds them of other text they have read. From there they make text-to-world connections. Teachers can help students make text-to-world connections through online database searches, such as biographies and timelines. With each of these types of connections we could use color coded highlighting in Microsoft Word or with the SMART board to indicate what types of connections students are making. As the school year progresses and the students have read more and more items either as a class or individually, students could keep a database of these connections. This could be created by the teacher or ITRT and could be a simple form that has student type in the book name and author, choose what type of connection it is from a drop down, then a description of the connections. Over time this database could help students report on and organize their learning progress. As students master the strategies they could report on their comprehension by creating a collection of connections. Taking it a step further they could evaluate each other’s reports and defend why they made the connections they did. This database could be expanded as they learn to understand and identify literary elements. A database is a great sorting and classifying tool that helps synthesize all aspects of these learning strategies.
As the author points out, one does have to be aware of pitfalls when making connections. Often when students are engaged in a technology lesson they just want to raise their hand to talk about the computers they have at home or what tool they have seen their family member use – it’s a connection but not exactly on track of the lesson. Teachers should steer the students towards meaningful connections to the lesson at hand by asking how and why questions. For example they may ask about how they have seen family members use technology tools or what they their parents might use different software for.
Through this reading I felt the goal is to make critical thinkers out of our student. It is not so important to be able to mark up reading but to make a connection. Using technology to keep students engaged and find ways to see those connections, as well as peer and teacher modeling, helps to refine these strategies. The more we know the more we wonder.
