Recognizing that these comments may border on sacrilege, it seems that the reading comprehension strategy 'making connections' may not be all that it's cracked up to be in the end. Deep down, you know it's true! If you've ever tried to explicitly teach students to make connections as they read, you'll be able to connect with this scenario.
Teacher finishes reading a passage of text to her class during shared reading. She asks the class to pause and think about what the text reminds them of. Student raises hand and offers, "This reminds me of when I went to the park." Okay. Another hand shoots up. "Yes?" "I have a park near my house. It's awesome. We go there every day." Okay. Three more hands shoot up and she just knows there are some great tales from the park waiting to be shared. Suddenly we have a room full of readers who have become completely distracted from the text and the teacher knows it. In a noble attempt to save the lesson, she attempts to prompt some metacognitive reflection by going back to the first respondent, "Now, when you made that connection to the park, how did it help you as a reader?" Without a moment's hesitation the student chimes, "It helped me to understand the text better." The teacher is not convinced of this but isn't sure how this lesson went off the rails.
... and it doesn't matter one bit if these same students can accurately identify if the connections they made were text-to-text, text-to-self or text-to-world connections. Thinking of what something in a text reminds you of on demand and then labelling the type of connection it is can't really improve a student's comprehension, can it?!?!
The practice of making connections certainly didn't help thirteen year-old Hailey, a student of mine who struggled with reading. She confirmed all of my suspicions and taught me about the problem with connections. Following a week or so of modelling, explicit instruction and some student practice, Hailey ran up to my desk breathless with excitement. "Oh my gosh! I know what I do wrong now when I'm reading!" I was intrigued- all this life, interest and excitement from a girl who was usually underwhelmed with anything that happened in the classroom. "My problem isn't that I don't MAKE connections, it's that I make too MANY connections and I get distracted from what I am reading because my mind starts to wander and I forget what I was reading about!" Hmm. Fascinating. "Hailey, while you are thinking about these connections, are your eyes still going left to right over the lines, or are you stopping to think before you read on?" She paused and answered, "No, my eyes keep going and then I don't know what I'm reading." We came up with the first step that she would pause her reading when she caught herself connecting and let her mind go before bringing her attention back to the point where she left off in the text and continuing to read. Seemed pretty simple, really; but, something amazing was happening here. Hailey was beginning to monitor her comprehension, a necessary step before comprehension strategies can be applied independently. We could think about the usefulness of the connections she was making as a second step.
In order for a connection to be helpful to the reader, I believe it has to be used rather than just made. It should be a means to an end, rather than an end unto itself. My good friend and Chicagoan, Gretchen Courtney, uses the term viable connections to describe the type of connections that will help a reader. For a connection to be viable, you'd need to use it in some way, and likely in the service of another strategy. For example, what happens when I visualize? While reading a descriptive passage that takes place on a beach, I find myself picturing the waves, feeling the roughness of the sand, hearing the gulls, smelling the saltwater. Where do these images come from? I tell my students that our brains are like filing cabinets of all of our experiences and knowledge. When I say 'beach', most people have a beach file whether they have actually been to the beach or just seen one on television. Some people will have thicker files than others. I may be able to recall a family trip to the beach, whereas someone else watched an episode of 90210. The point isn't whether or not we drew on text, self or world information; rather, the point is that were able to use something from our experience to help us visualize the scene in the story, deepening our comprehension.
Similarly, how could you possibly make an inference without connecting what is written in the text to what you know? When I read "he bounced the ball on the ground before passing it to his teammate, who shot and scored a three-pointer", I can infer that the sport they are playing is basketball because I know that basketball is one of the only sports that you need to bounce the ball and that uses the term 'three-pointer'. I connected my sports knowledge to the text to draw a conclusion about what was happening. I think, more often than not, our connections are best used in combination with other strategies. (There are two graphic organizers included at the end of this post that require students to use the connections that they make.)
Perhaps an example of a viable connection made in isolation is when I am trying to understand a character's feelings or motivations by thinking about a time when I felt that way or did the same thing. An important distinction here is that I am connecting to a concept presented in the text, rather than to a comparatively insignificant detail. You may find that students gravitate toward connecting to random details in texts, rather than to greater concepts. Think, "I have a dog, too." We can coach students to deepen these connections or abandon them through our questions. "So what do you know about having a dog that can help you understand how this character might be feeling?" Or, "How does your connection to the dog help you to understand what's happening in the story right now?"
I don't think we've gotten it completely wrong with 'making connections'; but it seems to me that our role as teachers is to coach students to make viable connections and to understand (truly) how their connections are helping them, or not helping them (as in Hailey's case) as readers.
References:
Gretchen Courtney and Associates at http://www.literacyconsulting.com/
Resources:
Email me at: teachingthekidsinthehall@gmail.com and I will send you these graphic organizers at PDF files.
