On the day of my second lesson, I wanted my students to work on making text-to-self connections. I began the lesson talking about making connections to what we are reading and I gave an example of a connection I made to the chapter we read the day before. I then asked students to share any connections they made with the previous chapters. A few students were willing to share their connections, and I made sure to point out to the class the importance of using evidence from the text to support their ideas.
I put my students in pairs and had them read the next chapter to each other. Then they were to discuss the chapter and individually respond to a writing prompt. The prompt asked them if they ever felt like the main character did when she thought about running away. I thought that this would be an easy prompt for the students to respond to because most young children have considered running away from home a one point or another. But I was surprised to hear many of my students say that they couldn’t respond to the prompt because they did not have any connections to the book. A lot of my boys told me that since the main character is a girl they are not able to relate to her or have any connections to her. The students were thinking very literally about the concept of making connections and were not able to think of more in depth ideas.
If I were to teach this lesson again I would spend more time talking about making connections. I would explain more about how we do not have to experience the same exact thing as what is happening in the book in order to have a connection to the text. I might even read a short story and have the students practice making connections with it and talk about the connections as a class so that students could see more examples of how to make connections to what they are reading.
I wonder if this was about not understanding connections, or just not identifying with the issues the character was facing? Sometimes it helps to have students use words to describe how the character was feeling (sad, worried, helpless, etc.) and then have them think of a time when they FELT that way. That gets them away from the concrete details of plot, setting,gender, etc. and thinking about emotions, which are universal.
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