Intertextual Connections in Classroom Reading Experiences

Schools across the country are striving to meet thetenets of the No Child Left Behind Act that holdsstates, districts, and schools accountable forstudent achievement, and requires children to beproficient readers by the end of third grade. Thislegislation also noted that children who read well inthe early grades are far more successful in lateryears, and those who fall behind often stay behindwhen it comes to academic achievement. Recognizingthe importance of effectively teaching andscaffolding developing readers, this study exploresthe intertextual connections that second gradestudents made during a variety of classroom readingexperiences and the important role of the teacher andthe classroom discourse community in making meaningfrom texts. Intertextuality is a construct thatincludes how readers make inferences,generalizations, and interrelate ideas betweenvarious source texts: personal experiences,literature, and other media sources. The kinds ofconnections made by students are described and theways these connections were manifested eitherspontaneously by the student or prompted throughexplicit questioning are considered for classroompractice.