essay text to world

The English Classroom

A GUIDE FOR PRESERVICE AND GRADUATE TEACHERS

Making Connections Between Texts, Self and The World

The situation.

You want your students to make connections between their reading and viewing to other media that have experienced.

The Solution

Making Connections is the process of making connections between personal contexts/experiences, similar text and worldly events and issues in society.

Making connections is a type of reading strategy that students need to learn. Through a variety of question types, they can begin to see that stories are connected. For example, if students are reading a gothic text, you can ask students, “what does this remind you of?” or “what other types of films have you seen that are similar? “

Check out this video below for further information:

What do students need to know?

Text to Text Connection: making connections between texts (Characters, setting, conflict, genres). Finding commonalities.

Text to World Connection: Making connections between stories and worldly events, history and contemporary events. For example, if you were studying Oliver Twist, it would be wise to observe and understand Victorian history.

Text to Self Connections: Making connections between the text and the reader’s own experiences, values and attitudes, beliefs and ideals.

Question Stems:  

• Does this remind you of anything?  Why?
• Is there a moment in this selection that make you think of something in your own life, another book, TV, movie..?
• Describe the historical context of the book/story.
• What connections can you make between the characters and the era which it is set?
• How do the characters experiences relate to your own experiences?

Here is a Choice Board that I created based around making connections for a novel study:

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Mentor Texts for Teaching Text to World Connections

When readers are really thinking about what they’re reading, they sometimes make connections to what’s going on in the world right now or how it may connect to past events.

These text to world connections can cause students to activate their background knowledge and can help keep them engaged with the text.

The more students are active, metacognitive readers, the more opportunities they have to truly understanding the texts they’re reading.

These type of texts are some of my favorites to read and share with students.

They can lead to some great class discussions or even to classroom service projects, which is what one of my classes decided after reading a particularly moving book ( Beatrice’s Goat by Page McBrier – one of the books listed here!)

The books below lend themselves to text to world connections. There are so many great books that fall into this category, it was hard to narrow the list down to a few!

This post contains amazon affiliate links. if you purchase through one of these links, the teacher next door, llc receives a few cents on the dollar. this commission directly supports us as a small business and ensures that we can continue to create high-quality content for upper elementary teachers, like yourself as always, the products shared are tried, true, and tested. enjoy.

1. One Plastic Bag 

One Plastic Bag by Miranda Paul is a true and powerful story of one African woman who to began a movement to recycle plastic bags that were polluting the area near her home.

2. Emmanuel’s Dream

Emmanuel’s Dream by Laurie Ann Thompson is an inspiring true story about a young boy named Emmanuel from Ghana, West Africa. With a deformed leg, many people did not believe in Emmanuel. However, he had a dream to become a cyclist and was determined to achieve not only this but so much more.

3. The Great Kapok Tree

The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry is a vibrant picture book detailing the importance of rainforest conservation.

4. The Watcher: Jane Goodall’s Life with Chimps 

The Watcher: Jane Goodall’s Life with Chimps  by Jeanette Winter is about Jane Goodall’s life observing chimpanzees, from her childhood years in London to her adulthood in the African forests of Gombe, Tanzania.

5. Malala’s Magic Pencil

Malala Yousafzai writes in her picture book, Malala’s Magic Pencil , of how she wished for a magic pencil as a child growing up in Pakistan. Malala describes all of the good things she would do with her pencil in this heartwarming story.

6. Fly Away Home

Fly Away Home by Eve Bunting follows a homeless boy who lives in an airport with his father. One day, the young boy sees a trapped bird fly free and finds hope in its liberation.

7. Beatrice’s Goat

Beatrice’s Goat by Page McBrier is a children’s book about the true story of a young Ugandan girl whose life is forever changed by the gift of a goat from Heifer International.

8. Ada’s Violin

Ada’s Violin by Susan Hood is a true story about a children’s orchestra in Paraguay. Their orchestra is different, however, because their instruments are made from recycled trash, the author, through her beautifully written words, spreading a message of hope and innovation to those who read.

9. Rice from Heaven

Rice From Heaven by Tina Cho is based on a true story about one young girl’s bravery in helping feed starving people in North Korea by sending rice balloons over the border.

Here are a few more self to world connection mentor texts:

Brave Girl by Michelle Markel Baseball Saved Us by Ken Mochizuki Follow the Drinking Gourd by Jeanette Winter Drawn Together by Minh Lê The Boy Who Changed the World by Andy Andrews Sam and the Lucky Money by Karen Chinn Stella Brings the Family by Miriam B. Schiffer The Proudest Blue by Ibtihaj Muhammad Over and Under the Pond by Kate Messner

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• Read more about: Mentor Texts

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Text-to-Text, Text-to-Self, Text-to-World

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Text-to-Text, Text-to-Self, Text-to-World Handout

Text-to-text, text-to-self, text-to-world printable pdf, text-to-text, text-to-self, text-to-world google doc.

This Text-to-Text, Text-to-Self, Text-to-World handout helps students develop connections between a text and their own lives, current events, and history. It is available as a PDF and a Google Doc. Learn more about this strategy .

Directions: Use the copy of the text provided by your teacher to make any notes. Read the text once, and then read it again to find ideas that you can use to answer the following questions.

• Text-to-Text : How do the ideas in this text remind you of another text (story, book, movie, song, etc)? Complete one of the following statements: What I just read reminds me of . . . (story/book/movie/song) because . . .  The ideas in this text are similar to the ideas in . . .  because . . . The ideas in this text are different than the ideas in. . . because . . .  
• Text-to-Self : How do the ideas in this text relate to your own life, ideas, and experiences? Complete one of the following statements: What I just read reminds me of the time when I . . .  I agree with/understand what I just read because in my own life . . .  I don’t agree with what I just read because in my own life . . .  
• Text-to-World : How do the ideas in this text reading relate to the larger world—past, present and future. Complete one of the following statements: What I just read makes me think about. . . (event from the past) because . . . What I just read makes me think about. . . (event from today related to my own community, nation or world) because. . . What I just read makes me wonder about the future because . . . 

How to Cite This Handout

Facing History & Ourselves, “ Text-to-Text, Text-to-Self, Text-to-World ”, last updated March 15, 2021.

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Description

Reading comes alive after we recognize how the concepts in content connect to our experiences and beliefs, events happening in the world, our comprehension of history, and our knowledge of other content. The text-to-text, text-to-self, text-to-world method helps learners develop the habit of making these connections as they read. When learners are given a purpose for their reading, they can comprehend better and make meaning of the ideas in the content. You can use this method with any content—historical or literary—and with other media, such as film. It can be used at the beginning, middle, or end of the reading process to get learners engaged with content, to help learners understand the content more intensely, or to assess learners’ comprehension of the content.

Implementation

• Select a Text: This method works best with content that raises universal themes that may resonate with learners’ own experiences and with the material they have studied previously. Instructors often give learners their copy of the content so that they can mark it up, although this is not required.
• Guide Learners through Text-to-Text, Text-to-Self, Text-to-World: The accompanying handout for this method provides you with sample questions that you can give learners to guide them through this learning activity. The questions included in the instructions are general but can be easily modified to connect to the material your class is studying. For instance, you may ask learners to connect what they read to particular contents or to events you have studied earlier in the school year.
• Debrief: Learners gain a deeper comprehension of the content and the world around them when they have the opportunity to discuss their responses with peers. Learners can share their answers with a partner, in small groups, or as part of a broader discussion.

Modifications

• One Connection:  If you are short on time, you can give learners the option of writing about one connection they have found between the content and their lives.
• Mapping Relationship:  Social maps are a visual way to illustrate connections between people, but they can also be used to show relationships between ideas and events. An extension of this learning activity would be to have learners draw the connections they find between the content and other ideas, occurrences, or experiences. Learners can work on these maps in groups, noting the relationships among their responses.

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Making Connections During Read Aloud

• Select a Student Text  or passage to read aloud. Display it in a visible location.
• Create a list of personal connections you will model while reading the text.
• Introduce the three types of connections: text-to-self, text-to-text and text-to-world.
• Read the text aloud. Use the Think Aloud strategy to model one of the three types of connections. Emphasize connections that add to the understanding of this particular text. Explain why some of those connections aid understanding of the text better than others.
• What does this story remind you of?
• Can you relate to the characters in the story?
• Does anything in this story remind you of anything in your own life?
• What does this remind you of in another book you have read?
• How is this text similar to other things you have read?
• How is this text different from other things you have read?
• What does this remind you of in the real world?
• How are the events in this story similar to things that happen in the real world?
• How are events in this story different from things that happen in the read world?
• Provide a three-column chart to record all three types of text connections. Display sample connections in the classroom for students to reference.

English language learners

Making connections allows English language learners to comprehend texts using information that is already familiar. Consider allowing English language learners to make connections to texts in their first language to assist them in compartmentalizing what they know and what they learn.

Connections to anti-bias education

Making connections gives students space to share their own experiences and hear about the experiences of others in their community. Making connections also encourages students to think about their learning in the context of the larger world.

• Student sensitivity.

Print this Strategy

Please note that some Strategies may contain linked PDF handouts that will need to be printed individually. These are listed in the sidebar of this page.

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