The Super Six Comprehension Strategy known as Making Connections, is one of the easiest for students to understand and use independently.
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In My Pioneers of Rock Music Unit, Making Connections is a strategy that I use before OR after every piece of reading we do in class. Most times I will use this strategy as a verbal discussion starter to get the students interested in the lesson before we actually start. Below is a lesson that I use in my unit, and an explanation of how I teach it to my Year 7 or 8 classes. Click the image to go to the Pioneers of Rock Unit of Work.
Making Connections
The Making Connections strategy is all about getting your students to make links between what they already know about a topic before they actually engage with reading the text. The strategy encourages students to look at all parts of the text in order to gain clues about what the type of information they think they will be reading about.
Description of Making Connections
Good readers make personal connections from the text with:
- Something in their own life—Text to Self
- Another text—Text to Text
- Something occurring in the world—Text to World
Questions
- Can you make a text to self connection?
- Can you make a text to text connection?
- Can you make a text to world connection?
Question stems for students
- This reminds me of…
- I know another….
- I’ve read another…
- I’ve watched another…
- I remember when….
- This part is like ….
- The character/music/artwork is like….
- This is similar to/different from….
- I can relate to this because….
- I have had a similar experience when….
Pioneers of Rock Making Connections Lesson
This lesson is the first lesson to introduce actual information about how Rock music started.
The lesson starts with displaying the graphic below while the students have the written information about “The Roots of Rock and Roll” in front of them. As a class we discuss each of the questions in the graphic with the students offering up their answers, this doesn’t usually take long and I am always amazed at the different answers I get with each different class.
Next we read the information and students ask any questions about the information they don’t understand, again this is different depending on the class.
After reading we discuss the questions in the next graphic pictured above. This part of the lesson is still the introduction to the next piece of information.
The next part of the includes more information. Again as a class we read through the text and discuss any points or questions that the students ask about. At this point I usually play some original Blues Music from Robert Johnson so the class an get a feel for the music we are learning about.
The last part of the lesson is a Connection Web. For most of my classes, this is the first time we use this strategy so we complete the task together as a class. When I use this strategy a second time students complete as a group, then subsequent times it is done independently. Just like in the parts of the lesson. Each time this graphic is completed as a class, the recorded information is different! It always depends on the experiences that my students bring to the class. After we have completed the Connection Web on the board students are given time to complete the work in their books, at this time I put on some more Blues Music and take a little wander around the room to check up on how much work students have/have not completed!
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Until next time
Happy teaching
Julia from Jooya
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