Consolidating Understanding: The Connect Two Strategy

Connect Two is awesome. This is something that not only helps students after they have read, but also helps students before and during reading. 

This strategy is achieved by showing students vocabulary words that will be in the text and letting them associate the words with their own meanings. The students can predict what the text may be about, and what the words may be trying to tell when used altogether. So, during reading the students are already having these important vocab words in their heads, which is great. After reading the text, the students can choose a selection of the words (or all of them if there aren't that many) and summarize what that word means/how it was used in the text. This is great for consolidating understanding. 

How I would use it…

I think Connect Two would be a great strategy to use for many subjects, such as language, science, social studies, or reading. Really anything that students have to read, using the Connect Two strategy would help students. I think teachers could do this where the students write it out, or just think about the vocabulary terms and how they fit together.