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Welcome to this Week's Lesson on strategic reading! In this lesson, you will learn a
reading strategy called connecting to the text which will help you engage and interact
with a work of fiction. You will need to take a page of Cornell notes
listing the various reading strategies so that you can practice these reading strategies
as we read a short story. One of the most significant reading strategies
to activate your interest and help you relate to a story or a novel is the strategy of Connection.
When you connect to a short story or article, you find something in the reading passage
that reminds you of something that you already know. The process of connecting to what you're
reading helps you to link into what is familiar and begin understanding the text.
There are three ways that you can "Connect to a Text" and they are: Text to Me; Text
to Text; and Text to World. The Text-to-me strategy is when you can make
a personal connection based on your own experiences and background knowledge. For example, we
will be reading a play about Anne Frank titled The Diary of a Young Woman. As I read, I try
to see if I can make a personal connection to my own past experiences relating characters
to people I know or a setting that is similar to a place I have been. As we begin this drama
you may say to yourself, "I keep a diary too," or "I am about the same age as Anne," or "I
know what Anne means about her mom! My mom gets on my case too!" These would be examples
of you connecting the text to yourself. A Text-to-text connection is made when you
recall another book, poem, article, or other reading passage you read in the past that
relates to the text that you are currently reading. For example, as we read The Diary
of a Young Woman, you would realize, "We read and discussed the persecution of the Jews
and the Holocaust in Europe last year in our history textbook," or "I read the graphic
novel Maus where the Jews were represented by mice in concentration camps and the Nazis
were represented by cats." Text-to-World is connecting the text you are
reading to bigger issues and problems that are going on in the world. For example, you
might think as you read this play, "The adults really treat Anne like a little child. Even
today, grownups don't respect teens' opinions and ideas," or "The Nazi genocide of the Jewish
people is similar to the atrocities that are happening in Darfur."
Making it a point to connect to the text whether it's a personal experience; something you've
read about, or something you watched in the News, can really help you access greater understanding
and interaction with your reading. When you connect to the text, you will also find that
you will remember what you have read much more vividly than if you had read it without
using the strategy. Let's get ready to read and connect.