This term in Year 5, we have been exploring a range of reading and comprehension strategies including finding the main idea, making predictions, making text connections, note taking and summarising important information.

We have used a range of texts to further explore and develop these strategies including, ‘The Great Kapok Tree’ by Lynne Cherry and ‘Flood’ by Jackie French. These texts allowed us to make a range of text to self, text to text and text to world connections. When making text to self connections we have been reflecting on our own experiences and comparing them to various aspects of the book. Similarly, we have been identifying key features or themes and comparing them to other texts we have read. We have found making text to world connections to be a more challenging concept to wrap our heads around as we have to think really deeply about issues that are impacting the entire world or events on the news and compare them to themes or ideas in the story. Whilst this concept is more challenging, we have done some wonderful deep thinking and come up with some amazing and strong text to world connections.

For one of our main activities in making connections, we read the book ‘Flood’ by Jackie French. This text was inspired by the Queensland floods in 2011. 'Flood' is a moving and sensitive story of a natural disaster as seen through the honest eyes of a cattle dog that has been separated from his family. The floodwater mercilessly rips through the towns, and finally recedes, leaving a devastating widespread path of destruction.

We talked about how the flood tore apart a dock where boats went and there was a tugboat that helped out. People from all over the world came to help during and after the devastating flood in 2011. 'Flood' was a book that really got me thinking about what it’s like during a flood and things you lose and you could lose the house you’ve been in your whole life. In the end it was good to know that so many people from across the globe came to help hundreds of people. Our activity was to find connections between the book 'Flood' and what we have seen or experienced in our lifetime. We did a Text to Text, Text to Self and Text to world. Our whole class managed to have a connection with at least one of those activities. It was fun to learn about the 2011 flood but devastating at the same time. I liked the book 'Flood' and the activities afterward. I liked writing about my experience and things I’ve seen on TV and things that I have heard. -Benjamin 

'Flood' was a book about a true story of a massive flood that happened in Brisbane. Our activity was that we had to write about similar things that connect to 'Flood', like books, movies, the news and things that have happened to us or someone else that we have seen. We wrote a text to self, a text to text and a text to world. It was a fun activity to do and it was very interesting to learn. I wrote about things on the news and things that happened to me.- Liana