Thursday, February 19, 2009

Book Talk

We are now a couple of weeks into our Eric Carle Author Study. Students have become familiar with his books and are making connections with them during their book talks and in their writing. Students have been focusing on two main connections: text-to-self (connecting a book with something that has happened to them) and text-to-text (making connections between two or more books). The writing sample above is an explanation of text-to-text connections written by a student : "I am writing about text-to-text connections. If you do not know what it means I will tell you. It means that your book has a connection with another book. My connection is about The Very Hungry Caterpillar and the book called The Very Lonely Firefly."
Connections help with students' comprehension of a story. We encourage students to make connections with stories they are reading at home as well. Below are some examples of questions that can be used to facilitate student connections at home:
Text-to-Self:
What does this book remind you of?
Has something like this ever happened to you before?
How did you feel when you read this book?
Text-to-Text:
Does this remind you of something that happened in another book?
How is this book different from other books you have read?
Does this character remind you of a character from another book you have read?

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