Connecting Ideas in Texts
Describe connections between events, ideas, or concepts in informational text using time, sequence, cause-and-effect, and comparison language, and identify logical connections between sentences and paragraphs
Typical age: 8–9 years
“After reading a non-fiction passage — like one about climate or history — can your child explain what caused something to happen, what the effect was, and how the author linked those ideas together?”
0 / 3 mastered
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Needs first
- Main Topic of Informational TextsREQUIRED
Describing connections in informational text builds on identifying main topic and key details
- Main Topic & Key DetailsREQUIRED
Identifying logical connections between paragraphs builds on multi-paragraph main idea work
- Representing numbers with objects (age 8+)
Cross-subject: understanding informational text connections (e.g. texts with charts/graphs) benefits from data representation literacy in maths
Unlocks next
- Combining information from textsREQUIRED
Integrating information from two texts builds on describing connections in informational text; the step up is from within-text connections to cross-text synthesis
- Explaining Relationships in TextsREQUIRED
Explaining relationships builds on describing connections
- Explaining Events & IdeasREQUIRED
Explaining events/procedures/causes builds on describing connections in informational text; the step up is from identifying connections to explaining what happened and why
- Structure of information texts
Understanding how text structure conveys information builds on prior work identifying connections between ideas in informational text