Literacy 

LITERACY KEY CONCEPTS - MAKING CONNECTIONS

Currently, all teachers are participating in reading and writing moderation tasks.  This is the process whereby teachers compare student work samples to the curriculum to identify areas of strength and challenge.  Moderation is an important process for many reasons: it improves teachers’ knowledge of the curriculum; creates consistency across the school; and provides teachers with valuable information about student progress. 

In a recent reading moderation task, some of our teachers examined work samples that demonstrate students’ ability to make connections to a text.  Making connections in an important comprehension strategy that students apply from Foundation through to Year Six. Making connections while viewing or reading a text allows us to understand how a character feels, visualise important ideas and concepts and predict events in a story, all of which promote engagement and improve our understanding.

When teaching students to make connections, we often categorise connections as ‘text to self’, ‘text to text’ and ‘text to world’.  As these terms imply, the complexity of the connections that students are able to make increases as they progress along the continuum.  For example, students at the beginning of the continuum might make ‘text to self’ connections to a character in a story who shares some physical traits with them.  Whereas students at the other end of the continuum often make ‘text to world’ connections where they are able to link the themes in a text to events happening in our world today.

Asking your child to share the connections that they are making while reading or viewing a text is a great springboard for rich, insightful discussions.  Like us teachers, I’m sure you will be impressed by how wise our BNW students can be!