Recommendations+for+future+implementation

__**Recommendations for Future Implementation**__

Provide time while reading to allow students to make connections. In the beginning, model the strategy, but continue practicing until students are able to make connections on their own.

For K-1 grade, the teacher should focus on text-to-text and text-to-self. Teacher should only have students recall from their own background knowledge or books that are familiar to them. Start forcing students to start talking aloud when making connections, ie. "This part of the book reminds me of..." For these grades teacher must provide a lot of modeling and most of it should be done during the read aloud. If implementing graphic organizers to help in making connections, these should either be done together in the whole group setting or in a small group setting with a lot of guided practice. For kindergarten allow for differentiated instruction where students can draw pictures rather than adding a lot of text. In order to help students in the different levels there would be different expectations. For the low achieving students, allow students to just draw with pictures. Have a lot more discussion when completing the work. For the middle achieving students allow them to branch away from drawing pictures and encourage them to start adding text. Allow little discussion, but push them to try and do most of it independently. Finally, for the high achieving students encourage them to just add the text. Allow them to finish the work independently and only answers questions when they seem stuck.

For 2-3 grade, still focus on text-to-text and text-to-self. While students are making connections they should be able to point out the text-to-text and text-to-self on their own. Students can work on making connections while they are together during a read aloud or by themselves during silent reading. There should be some time set aside that allows the students to share their connections. This helps them to be able to show an understanding by being able to explain it. The teacher should use some type of graphic organizer to help the students organize their thoughts while helping them make connections. The teacher still needs to model how to use these graphic organizers in either a whole group setting or a small group setting. This needs to be done before the teacher allows the students to complete these graphic organizers on their own. At this time the students should be able to do them more independently. Students can also have the option of using different types of organizers. The teacher can either give the students the choice in what type of organizer they want the students to use or allow different organizers to be used in different settings. In order for the graphic organizers to be useful for all students accommodations need to be done. The teacher can critique the graphic organizers making some more advanced and others simpler. The teacher can allow some students to add a lot of detail, while another graphic organizer can be more structured which makes the student focus on the important details. A section should be labeled text-to-text while the other should be labeled text-to-self. The teacher should be pushing for the students to make connections on their own.

For 4-5, students should have an understanding of text-to-text and text-to-self. While reading students should be able to address these concepts without prompting from the teacher. Now the teacher needs to introduce the students to the idea of text-to-world. How what they read can be related to the world around them. The teacher should first model how the connection is made through some type of read aloud done in either a whole group or small group setting. After the mini-lesson, the students should then put this into practice during their silent reading time. Students should now have more freedom in what type of graphic organizers they can use. The graphic organizers should all allow them to incorporate text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world. The students should be continuing to make connections as they read daily. The students should also be able to explain their connections to another student in a way that makes sense. Students should be able to make connections across the curriculum. The teacher should first focus on showing them how different subjects can be related such as math and science. During activities, allow students to make connections based on other subjects they are learning. For students at different levels, provide different goals. For students who are low achieving have them list only a couple connections in their reading. They should still cover all of the parts, but when it comes to text-to-world, have a criteria of only listing a couple in the beginning and gradually increasing that number. Also, provide a couple of graphic organizers for them to use. Limiting them to graphic organizers that can really help them focus on the connections. For students who are middle achieving, allow more choice when it comes to graphic organizers. All the graphic organizers should link all three connections in some way. These students should be able to list many types of connections when it comes to text-to-text and text-to-world. When working with text-to-world allow discussion in small groups. Also, in the beginning provide a smaller amount of examples for text-to-world. As students become more confident increase the number of examples needed. For the high achieving students, allow them freedom in their choices of graphic organizers. The teacher should not put a limit on the students with how many examples they can provide, however, the teacher should continue and push the students to finding more. These students should be able to complete the work independently, but if needed, allow some discussion.

**__This Particular Lesson...__**

A mixture of whole and small group lesson elements would still be successful. An introduction to the reading strategy during a whole-group interactive read-aloud would be best since it would expose all students to new material simultaneously. At small group centers or workshops, students can have more hands-on practice with the reading comprehension strategy. Students should be grouped heterogeneously, at least in the beginning, so students of all levels and abilities learn to work together. If, after a few concrete assessments, particular students still do not display understanding, then struggling students--"struggling" in this context refers to any student who is struggling with the "Making Connections" strategy specifically, not reading in general--can be grouped together for a short mini-lesson meant to scaffold their understanding. If a student does still not understand how to make connections after a couple small group mini-lessons, that student can be pulled aside independently for an intervention specific to his/her needs.

Both teacher and student think-alouds of the "Making Connections" strategy are important, so discussion time--whole group, small group, or partners--is necessary so students can share their connections and ideas. Talking about concepts as well as the strategy with others will also help foster autonomous strategy use. For differentiated levels, the amount of direction and choice will vary according to student needs. Struggling students will need more direction, more examples, and more discussion. Advanced students will need less direction and more encouragement for independence, more choice (i.e. graphic organizer, texts to read, etc.) and fewer examples; high students' discussion should also focus more on the connections and concepts themselves whereas struggling students should include talk on //how// they performed the strategy.