Build critical thinking and comprehension skills by making connections between what you read and your own experiences, other texts, and the world around you.
Making Connections
When we read, we make connections between what we see on the page and what we already know. This helps us understand and remember what we read. There are three types of connections we can make while reading: text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world.
Text-to-self connections are made when we connect something in the text to our own experiences or feelings. For example, if the main character in a story is feeling sad because her pet died, we might connect that to a time when we felt sad because of a similar experience.
Text-to-text connections are made when we connect something in the text to something we’ve read or heard before. For example, if a character in one book reminds us of a character in another book, we might connect those two books in our minds.
Text-to-world connections are made when we connect something in the text to something we know about the world. For example, if a character in a book has to face a natural disaster like a hurricane, we might connect that to news stories we’ve seen about hurricanes in the real world.
What type of connection do we make when we connect something in the text to something we know about the world?
Text-to-self, Text-to-text, Text-to-world.