Making connections: The nature and occurrence of links in literacy teaching and learning

Making connections can facilitate learning in several ways, for example, linking new ideas to existing schema or cueing the use of available skills for use in different contexts. The paper focuses on links between reading and writing. Theory suggests common processes operate in reading and writing that are mutually supportive in learning; empirically the relationship between performance in reading and writing is significant. There is evidence that specific writing practices can improve reading and, similarly, that reading can impact writing. This paper presents and applies empirically a framework for analysing the nature of the links that teachers make in literacy learning settings. The framework encompasses both the sites for, and the types of, connection; it is applied using observations and the associated transcripts from two corpora of literacy lessons from guided reading and teacher-led segments of writing lessons at the primary school level. The framework and these data provide a tentative indication of typical practice and important information for professional learning.