Use text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world comparisons to help students connect ideas in a text to their own lives, current events, and history.
Reading comes alive when we recognize how the ideas in a text connect to our experiences and beliefs, events happening in the larger world, our understanding of history, and our knowledge of other texts. The Text-to-Text, Text-to-Self, Text-to-World strategy helps students develop the habit of making these connections as they read. When students are given a purpose for their reading, they are able to better comprehend and make meaning of the ideas in the text.
A text-to-text connection relates the ideas in a text to another text. The texts students connect could be stories, books, movies, songs, or other types of media.
A text-to-self connection ties the ideas in a text to a student’s own life, ideas, and experiences.
A text-to-world connection relates a text to events in the larger world: the past, present, and future.
You can use this strategy with any type of text, 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 students engaged with a text, to help students understand the text more deeply, or to evaluate students’ understanding of the text.