You Can Connect Your Life to Stories!

Your prior knowledge is everything you already know from your life. When you see a book about snow, you can remember how cold snow feels or how it looks falling from the sky. This helps you understand what the characters in the story might be feeling.

You make connections when you link what you are reading to something you already know. If you read about a birthday party, you can think about your own birthday and how happy you felt. This connection helps you understand how the characters in the story feel too.

You can look at the pictures in books and think about similar things you have seen. If you see a picture of a rabbit in a garden, you might remember seeing rabbits in your yard or at a park. This connection helps you understand why the rabbit is in the garden.

You can also use your experiences to predict what might happen next in a story. If you know that seeds need water to grow, you can guess that a character planting seeds will need to water them. This makes reading more exciting because you can make good guesses!

Prior Knowledge: All the things you already know from your life experiences, like knowing that dogs bark or that ice cream is cold.

Connection: When you link what you are reading to something you already know, like when a story about a birthday party reminds you of your own birthday.

Understanding: When you know what is happening in a story because you used what you already know to help you figure it out.

Remember: When you think back to things you learned or did before, like remembering how to tie your shoes or what happened at the park.

Picture in your mind: When you imagine what the words are saying, like seeing a red balloon in your head when you read about one in a story.

Experience: Something you have done or that happened to you, like going to the park, eating pizza, or playing with a pet.

You can practice making connections by talking about books with your family. When you read together, share what the story reminds you of from your own life. This helps you understand the story better and makes reading more enjoyable.

You can also look at the pictures in books and talk about similar things you have seen or done. This connects your experiences to the story and helps you predict what might happen next. Use Pictures as Reading Clues to help you make even stronger connections.

Making connections with prior knowledge works together with many other reading skills. You can use predicting and prior knowledge to guess what will happen in stories. You can also predict from pictures by connecting what you see to what you already know.

When you use illustrations to support comprehension, you are making connections between the pictures and your experiences. You can also use prior knowledge to start reading by thinking about what you already know before you begin a new book.

Making connections helps you make predictions about unfamiliar texts and supports basic reading pattern recognition. All of these skills work together to help you demonstrate interest in reading and become a confident reader.

You are ready to start making connections with your prior knowledge right now! Every experience you have had in your life can help you understand stories better. Whether you have played in snow, helped in the kitchen, or seen animals at the park, all of these experiences are valuable for reading.

The more you practice connecting your experiences to what you read, the better you will become at understanding stories and enjoying books. Remember, you already know so many things that can help you be a great reader!