Where and When Did I Find the Word?: 'Connections' came from Mason, Wood, and Valasa's article, "Teaching Low Achieving Students to Self-Regulate Persuasive Quick Write Responses." The article states, "instruction should be facilitated in a way that encourages and directs students to effectively express knowledge or opinion, or to initiate a reading-writing connection" (p. 305).
What It Means: To make a 'connection' through reading-writing is to relate the information that was just obtained to yourself, the world, or to another text.
Level of Familiarity: I feel that I am very familiar with making 'connections' while reading or writing about a text. Currently in the Resource Room I am working in, there is a new comprehension program called BluePrint and the first comprehension strategy they teach is 'connections.' Students not only are taught how to make connections but how to differentiate which 'connections' are good and relate to the passage and which can be put away.
Do I Want to Know This Word Well and Why?: I think that making 'conncetions' on both reading and writing is one of the easier comprehension strategies to express in my opinion. I feel that I know this word well because I am so familiar with it in both my own experiences as a student and now as a teacher as well.
Do I Think Others Should Know This Word... If so Who and Why?: Learning to make 'connections' is very beneficial for students in the classroom. I have this one student currently who is very behavioral in the classroom on top of his learning disabilities. This student is very much interested in animals and when there is a topic or reading-writing assignment dealing with animals, he is a different student. Being able to make that 'connection' to his own experiences with the topic of animals not only motivates his effort in the classroom, but he is also very knowledgeable on the topic as well. Being able to make 'connections' to content can really improve the ability and quality of work in the classroom. I feel that teachers need to be aware of 'conncetions' to help students who do struggle with certain reading and writing assignments to not only motivate them but increase their quality of understanding a topic.
Benedek-Wood, Elizabeth, Mason, Linda H., & Valasa, Lauren (2009). "Teaching low-
achieving students to self-regulate persuasive quick write responses." Jouranl of
Adolecent & Adult Literacy 53(4): 303-312.
As with many of your entries Jessica, your reflections help me to reflect on my level of understanding with the terminology used in the readings. I agree that recognizing the connections we make when learning or developing an appreciation for the "connectedness of learning" is particularly important when helping students learn well.
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