1. This is a very basic, barebones PPT with some examples
of how to complete your “Making Literary Connections” PPT.
You must have a minimum of 8 slides:
A Title Page with your name and the name of the assignment “Making Literary Connections”
2 for Text to Self Connections
2 for Text to Text Connections
2 for Text to World Connections
A concluding slide that answers the question: Why should we connect with literature?
YOU MUST INCLUDE THE DETAILS OF THE CONNECTION, NOT JUST STATE TWO THINGS ARE THE SAME OR DIFFERENT.
You must not simply read off your slides when presenting. You must be familiar enough with what you wrote to present it without staring at it the whole time. You may separate sentences into two slides if there’s a lot of information.
You must have at least one graphic per slide.
See the rubric that we created together for more specifics.

2. Making Literary Connections
Making Connections
Making Literary Connections
Text to Self
Text to World
Text to Text
Text to Self
Text to Text
Text to World

3. Text to Self Connection
I taught students with special needs for several years. I have a masters in special education. When I read this story, I was saddened that Doodle’s quality of life could have been so much better if his family had accepted him more for his unique gifts. Seeing the world as a beautiful place, full of wonder, is a trait to be valued. It has been my own personal experience that the children with the most difficulties (physically and/or cognitively) are also the ones that can teach us the most about enjoying the simple pleasures in life. In the story, Doodle loves the environment of Old Woman Swamp as evidenced when he ran his hand through the grass and said, “Pretty, pretty, pretty!”

4. Text to Self Connection

5. Text to Text Connection
“Us and Them” by David Sedaris reminds me of another short story we covered in SSR this year—”There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury. Both Sedaris and Bradbury seem to believe that technology can have a negative impact on society. Bradbury goes as far as demonstrating that the human race will be wiped out by the very technology that it loves and relies on so much for daily convenience and functioning. David Sedaris is slightly less dramatic; he shows us the difference between a family who connects without technology and a family whose perspective of others is judgmental based on their lack of use of technology.

6. Text to Text Connection

7. Text to World Connection
Kate Chopin, author of the short story “The Story of an Hour” is one of my favorite authors; however, she couldn’t have known that women are treated better in the United States at this point in time than in most countries in the world. For example, the average Afghan girl will live to only 45 – one year less than an Afghan male. After three decades of war and religion-based repression, an overwhelming number of women are illiterate. More than half of all brides are under 16, and one woman dies in childbirth every half hour. Domestic violence is so common that 87 per cent of women admit to experiencing it. But more than one million widows are on the streets, often forced into prostitution. Afghanistan is the only country in which the female suicide rate is higher than that of males.

8. Answer the following question in your own words on the last slide of your PPT: Why is it important to make connections with what we read?

9. Why Connect?
We learn something new when we are able to make connections between what we are currently experiencing and something we already know. When we make few or no connections, learning within these experiences is difficult and easily forgotten. On the other hand, if we stay too close to what we already know, we are not pushed as learners into new understandings. For all learners, the most productive learning situation is one in which we stand within sight of what we already know as we push into new territory.