#Blog365 Day 36: The Mayflower Moving Connection

As educators, we work hard to help our students build connections to the world around them.  One regular strategy is text-to text, text-to-self, text-to-world.  While reading, students are encouraged to think about other texts they are familiar with and to think about how the texts are related.
As students master this, they then move onto relating texts to themselves and then ultimately to the world.

For several years now, I have noted modern day companies that have names rooted in history.  Silly, yes, but something I have given a momentary thought to.  The Mayflower Moving Company is one of those modern day companies.

We are currently beginning our studies of early colonies in class.  Today, we were reading one of my favorite books, The Pilgrim Cat, and enjoyed many short discussions along the way.  The story shares that the Pilgrims are not immediately able to leave the Mayflower upon their arrival to the New World.  This, of course, led to the discussion as to why the Pilgrims were not able to move inland.  

As we continued in this discussion, I asked my students if this reminded them of anything in their lives.   One student raised his hand and said that he recently moved.  His move was not nearly as great as the Pilgrims move, but it was a move none the less.  This discussion did not stop there. He related the story to his life because the company that moved his family was the Mayflower Moving Company.  With further discussion, we were able to make connections between the Mayflower that the Pilgrims used to move and the Mayflower moving truck that moved his family.  

WOW!  It made total sense to him.  We moved from text-to-self to text-to-world all via the Mayflower!