Making Connections

4.) Good readers make connections to the text.

In order for what is read to become meaningful and relative to the reader, personal connections must be made to prior knowledge. This prior knowledge includes what readers already knows about themselves, the world, and other texts or information.

These connections should happen on three levels:

• Text to Self: The reader can see similarities between their own daily life and what is read.
• Text to World: The reader draws comparisons between the text and events or conditions in the world as the reader knows it.
• Text to Text: The reader recalls information from other readings that can be compared to the text currently being read. 

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Making connections with Frindle by Andrew Clements

There were several passages in this book that led me to think about similarities to my own life, things about the world, and parts of other texts. Making connections can be done by relating an emotion felt as a result of this book and something else closely related. Making connections draws in deeper meaning, as new information is rooted to previously stored memories, allowing for quicker and more likely retrieval. These connections will be personalized to each reader as unique to their own experiences in life. 
 

Examples of making Connections while reading Frindle by Andrew Clements:

In general, I can see how children in third through sixth grade might be at the appropriate reading level to understand this text on their own. Important to making connections with what they read, this novel does well to describe situations about a typical "class leader" or "class clown" personality that many grade school children can identify with. 

Pg. 6- "Fifth grade was different. That was the year to get ready for middle school."
 

For many children that will read this novel, fifth grade either was or will be an important year in school. Many children mature during this year as their school day becomes broken up by switching classrooms for certain subjects and their work is graded. This feeling of importance as they are at the top of elementary school and soon to be in middle school is memorable and personal.

Pg. 11- "Nick had no particular use for the dictionary. He liked words a lot, and he was good at using them. But he figured that he got all the words he needed just by reading, and he read all the time."
 

Many children and adults feel this way about many difficult tasks. Literacy is about more than decoding words on a page and writing them. If one can function well based on the words already picked up through reading, why should one be forced to acquire more words in isolation? To many, it seems that what we already do is enough. This is true, however, if one compares the language of someone with an average vocabulary to someone with an expanded vocabulary, the differences usually are evident. To compete in an advancing society, communicating with a more intelligent sounding vocabulary will enhance one's marketability later in life. Here I have thought about text to text, text to self, and text to world connections.

Pg. 20- "Nick scratched his head and read it again. And then again. Not much better. It was sort of like trying to read the ingredients on a shampoo bottle." 
 

Here, the author directly writes a personal connection that the character made between trying to read the ingredients of a shampoo bottle and the difficult definition in his dictionary. Ingredient lists are full of scientific, unfamiliar terms that most people struggle to read and understand. Much like this experience, Nick's reading level was below that of the passage he was trying to read in his dictionary. This connection inspires the same connection in the reader's mind, helping them to feel the frustration Nick had felt.

Pg. 34- "And for three years, whenever he said "gwagala," his family knew that he wanted to hear those pretty sounds made with voices and instruments. Then when Nick went to preschool, he learned that if he wanted his teacher and the other kids to understand him, he had to use the word music." 
 

This scene models Nick making his own personal connection between purposely creating the word "frindle" and a time when he had learned words to represent things as a baby. By modeling this, the reader may either share a similar connection to their childhood or be inspired to think of a similar experience. A text to world connection can be made here between what Nick did and the abstract way that populations of people attach meaning to words and symbols, agreeing upon this representation at large.

 Pg. 52-53- "But Mrs. Granger thinks that it's rather like keeping children from saying 'ain't'- there have to be standards... We can't have kids walking around saying 'ain't,' can we?"
 

Adults can relate to this quote, as many find it important to preserve the origin of proper grammar and language. Children may relate to hearing their parents or guardians correct their use of the word ain't. In older times, this was not a real word. Just as Nick represents change with the word frindle for pen, he later proves to the adults that the dictionary has changed to include ain't as a real word in English.

Pg. 72- "Within four days he had set up a small company that was selling cheap plastic ballpoint pens specially imprinted with the word frindle."

A text to world connection can be drawn here, as innumerable ideas and products have been used as business plans. Businesses all over the world begin with a central, appealing idea. It is important to sense the societal priority placed on making money out of as much as possible. A text to text connection might also be drawn between any written explanation published about how large companies like Microsoft, Apple, or McDonald's began.

Pg. 77- "It is believed by many that the word quiz was made up in 1791 by a Dublin theater manager named Daly... Quiz is the only word in English that was invented by one person for no particular reason- that is until now."

A connection here has been drawn to information lifted from the news or another printed source about the originator of the word quiz. Daly's situation is much like Nick's in that they both randomly started a new word to represent something that become widely excepted in the dictionary as a new word.

Pg. 83- "If Nick knew, he'd probably stop mowing lawns and I'd never get him to save another penny."

Adults may make personal connections to this quote. It is understood that Nick's father wants his son to reap the benefits of earning profit from his word. Protection and love is displayed here and many readers may have displayed similar actions of protection and concern over a loved one.