Experience Text Relationship

Experience Text Relationship (ETR) is a strategy that helps students make connections between their experiences and those presented in a given text. Originally developed by Au (1979) to benefit students with culturally different backgrounds, the strategy is especially effective in building motivation and giving students a purpose for reading because it helps them see how a text relates to their own experiences. Using this strategy before students read activates their background knowledge and helps them make predictions that will be confirmed or refined as they read. As you ask students questions designed to probe their relevant experiences, you can connect these experiences to those they’ll encounter in the text. In doing this, you are motivating and preparing your students to read the story. See the examples in Figures 4A and 4B for how this can be done with fifth graders and first graders.

Since students are working in reading groups, you will be preparing a different set of ETR questions or statements for each book they are reading and then helping students activate and build their background knowledge through a small-group discussion of the questions. A practical way to do this is to introduce books to groups at different times during your language arts instructional block or on different days. While you are working with one group, students in the rest of the class can be involved in other activities such as learning centers or independent work.

FIGURE 4A

Teacher: Were you ever forced to do something that you didn’t think was fair? What was it? Student 1: I had to change schools because we moved. I didn’t want to leave my friends. Student 2: Yes, we had to stay in our room last year and miss a movie because our class was

not behaving and doing work.

Student 3: I’ve had to stay in and take care of my brother when my mom had to work and no one was around to watch him.

Teacher: How we react to a situation can make it easier or harder to handle. For example, if we think to ourselves, I’ll make the best of the situation until I can change it, instead of becoming angry about it, we often are better able to handle it and think of alternative plans for the future. We’re going to begin reading a book called in which a Navajo girl, Bright Morning, f inds herself in some terrible situations that she has no control over. How she reacts makes all the difference in the outcomes.

An example of the ETR strategy used in a fifth grade with the story Sing Down the Moon (O’Dell, 1970)

Teaching Comprehension: A Systematic and Practical Framework © ThinkingWorks®, Scholastic Teaching Resources

Before the Lesson

• Prepare several questions for each group that will help students connect their own experiences to those they will encounter in the text. For example, before reading The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (Scieszka, 1996), you might ask students if their actions were ever misinterpreted because people didn’t understand the reasons for them. One teacher asked her first graders, “How would your mom react if you took a favorite toy away from an annoying younger brother and made him cry? Would she believe you if you said you did it because you wanted to save it for him when he became bored?”

Teaching the Strategy

• When you meet with each group, tell students that they’ll soon be reading an inter- esting story and that to get ready for it, you’re going to ask them about experiences they’ve had that might be similar to those in the text. Remind them that making personal connections helps them activate background knowledge, and set a purpose for reading.

Experience Text Relationship

FIGURE 4B

Teacher: How many of you have been really busy doing something?

Student 1: Sometimes when I have a lot of homework and I have basketball practice the same night.

Student 2: I get really busy when my mom tells me to clean my room after I haven’t cleaned it for a week!

Teacher: You sound like busy people! Have any of you ever been too busy to answer someone when they were talking to you? Or, have you spoken to someone like your moms or dads when they were busy and they didn’t seem to hear you? Student 3: One time when my mom was doing the bills I asked her if I could go to my friend’s

house and she didn’t even answer me until the third time I said her name.

Student 4: One time I was playing Nintendo and my dad called me to go to dinner and I didn’t hear him until he was right next to me. He was kind of angry.

Student 5: When I play basketball I don’t usually hear people cheering for me or calling my name. They always say later, “Did you hear me?”

Teacher: Pretty crazy how it happens, isn’t it? Well today we’re going to read a story about a spider who was so busy she didn’t hear the things people said to her, and we’ll f ind out what she was doing that she was so busy!

An ETR lesson used in a first grade with the story The Very Busy Spider (Carle, 1985)

Teaching Comprehension: A Systematic and Practical Framework © ThinkingWorks®, Scholastic Teaching Resources

• Ask students a question from your list.

• Encourage students to share their experiences related to the question.

• Now you may pose a more specific question that is directly related to the experience of a character or characters in the story. The first-grade teacher followed up her discussion of taking away toys from siblings with this: “You all know the story of ‘The Three Little Pigs.’ Would you believe that the wolf didn’t really huff and puff on the pigs’ houses, that they fell down accidentally after the wolf sneezed on them? Would you believe that a wolf would only eat the pigs because he didn’t want to waste food? That’s what the wolf claims in the story we’re going to read!” • Alternatively, you may make a statement that will help the students understand the

similarities between their experiences and those in the story. In the discussion described above, the teacher could have made a statement such as “You all know the story of ‘The Three Little Pigs.’ Perhaps the wolf would like a chance to explain the events in that story from his point of view, just as you all said you’d want a chance to explain why you took the toy away from a younger brother or sister. Well, we’re going to read a book in which the wolf does get to tell his side of the story.” • Conclude the discussion by stating that the book the group will be reading will

have characters or events similar to the experiences they have discussed.

If the books that the groups are reading have a common theme, such as courage or heroes of the past, you can prepare one set of ETR questions and lead a whole class discussion. For the theme of courage, you might ask students: “How many of you know someone who has acted courageously? Describe what she or he did.” After class discussion, you can connect students’ experiences to the texts they will be reading by indicating that all the people they mentioned performed a courageous act, even if they were afraid or had a difficult time doing so.You can conclude the discussion by stating that the texts that the groups will be reading contain examples of courageous actions.

Writing Extension

A natural extension of ETR would be to have students write an essay in which they compare some aspect of the experience they encountered in the story to their own experience. Encourage students to illustrate the experiences they write about and share their stories and illustrations. If students have read other stories that contain similar experiences, they could write an essay comparing those two sets of experiences.

Assessment

One of the best ways to determine the effectiveness of ETR is through a postreading discussion that focuses students’ attention on comparing a character or an event in the story with the experiences they had discussed before reading. If the students are

able to answer questions about the text experience and, even better, respond to each other’s answers, you can conclude that the strategy helped them use their background knowledge to understand the story.

VOCABULARY STRATEGY:

In document Teaching Comprehension (Page 91-94)