What instructional strategy encourages students to make connections between texts and their own experiences?

The strategy that encourages students to make connections between texts and their own experiences is text-to-self connections. This instructional approach allows students to relate the events, themes, and characters of a text to their own lives. When students engage in this form of connection, they draw upon personal experiences, feelings, and memories to create a deeper understanding of the material they are reading. This not only enhances comprehension but also fosters a sense of relevance and personal investment in the text, making the reading experience more meaningful.

In this context, text-to-text connections refer to linking ideas or themes between different texts, while text-to-world connections involve relating the content of a text to broader societal or global issues. Text-to-media connections might include making associations between print text and other forms of media. Although these strategies are valuable in their own right, they do not specifically focus on the personal experiences of the students in the way that text-to-self connections do.