I Have a Text Connection!

Step inside a classroom of young minds who have studied reading strategies. The teacher is in the middle of reading a text out loud. A little hand pops up, "I have text connection!" As it turns out, this particular student has a dog who sort of, but not quite, looks like the dog in the book, and they have lots of stories to tell about their dog. The teacher cuts the student off when they start to say, "One time..." and begins reading again. Another hand pops up. Another text connection.

The teacher is frustrated. We know that good readers personally connect with the text. David Pearson and Nell Duke did the research. Ellin Keene and Susan Zimmermann brought the research into our classrooms with their groundbreaking book, Mosaic of Thought: The Power of Comprehension Strategy Instruction. We've added the strategies to our curriculum documents and spent lots of time teaching the strategies metacognitively.

So why do our students continue to make shallow connections with the text? There is a simple, yet powerful reason. Consider your own reading. Do you think about how you personally connect to the text when you read? I know that I don't stop and go, "Hmm, how do I connect to this text?" But I do connect.

I might relate to the character's situation, or emotions and feelings. It's possible that the setting is somewhere I've lived or visited, so I have a strong visual connection. I connect, but I connect on an emotional level. The character might have a dog, and I might have a dog, but that's a surface connection. Surface connections do not join us to the story and take us to new places on an emotional level. When I read the young adult novel, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, I had strong feelings about the character's situation. It effected me on a deeply emotional level. My first reaction was a protective maternal instinct. My daughter is the same age as the character in the book. I felt a strong need to warn and protect her from the same fate as the character. I cried for the character. My heart ached for the character.

Can young children connect in a powerful way to text? Yes. I've witnessed it. I read aloud the book, Finding Daddy: A Story of the Great Depression by Jo Harper to a group of second graders. At the end of the story, I noticed a few of the children had tears slipping down their cheeks. Although the children did not have the same misfortune of experience as the character in the story, the very idea of the character's father leaving touched these kid's on an emotional level. Their hearts ached for the character.

Personal connections are just that -personal. We do not always connect to a story on a personal level. In fact, sometimes we can't connect to the story at all. Instead of requiring a sticky note today with a connection, why don't we keep sticky notes available year round? Students can write a note about their connection when they make a true connection, rather than a "forced connection because the teacher said I should connect".

The best way to help students make connections is to get to know your students. As teachers, if we understand our students interests and thinking, then we can offer them books with characters in which they can relate. There is a reason for Harry Potter's success. Kids relate to the underdog Harry who had magical powers (and what kid doesn't want magical powers) and was able to crush his enemy. Readers connect to Harry on an emotional level -that place of low confidence that rises above and meets the challenge (with a bit of magical help). Take text connections to a new level by sharing your emotional connections to a story, and then ask students to do the same.