Recently Grade 5 has been working on different reading strategies for better comprehension of text. One of our strategies is Making Connections and it involves relating your personal experiences to the text you are reading for better understanding. Our text, My Brother Sam is Dead, set in Connecticut in 1775 and narrated by a young boy, tells of the human aspects of the Revolutionary War. The 5th graders are comparing and contrasting their lives to that of the narrator, helping them to have a deeper understanding of the novel and time period. This week, we put the strategy to the test and fully immersed ourselves in the colonial time period by making butter by hand and baking bread. While we did use a modern oven, the butter was made with a lot of muscle and plenty of shaking! Some students concluded that they would simply forgo eating butter all together if they had to work this hard to have it, with the added inconvenience of no refrigeration only complicating the situation. The following day, we had the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of our labor, by reading a chapter of our book in class, while eating our homemade bread and butter. Now that’s making a connection!