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What is Close Reading? Close reading is thoughtful, critical analysis of a text that focuses on significant details or patterns in order to develop a deep, precise understanding of the text’s form, craft, meanings, etc. It is a key requirement of the Common Core State Standards and directs the reader’s attention to the text itself.
Close Reading Includes: • Using short passages and excerpts • Diving right into the text with limited pre-reading activities • Focusing on the text itself • Rereading deliberately • Reading with a pencil • Noticing things that are confusing • Discussing the text with others • o Think-Pair Share or Turn and Talk frequently • o Small groups and whole class • Responding to text-dependent questions
Selecting a text: • When selecting a text or passage for close reading, consider two questions: • First, is there enough going on with the language and craft of the text to warrant the attention of multiple readings? • Second, does the understanding that comes from close reading sufficiently benefit students in light of the larger goals of the course or unit? • The answer to both needs to be yes in order to keep close reading from falling into its reputation as merely an exercise.
Engaging carefully with the text yourself: • Your purpose at this point is to read as you will ask your students to read: • multiple times, with pen in hand, with different (increasingly complex) purposes as you read and re-read.
Engage with the text yourself… • First, to determine the general meaning of the text (leaving knowledge and application of literary elements more or less tacit for now). Keep asking yourself, “What’s going on, and how do I know?” • Second, to examine the ways the author uses language and the discipline-specific structures of literature to create meaning. Your focusing question here might be “How do the author’s choices help me understand or appreciate something that I didn’t notice the first time I read?” • Third, to consider thematic meaning and connections between this text and others like it. Here, ask yourself, “What does this text cause me to think or wonder about some larger aspect the text and of the human condition?”
Developing text-dependent questions and accompanying learning activities: • You can see the Sample Close Reading Questions that resulted from multiple readings of the first section of the short story “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry and the poem “Latin Deli” by Judith Ortiz Cofer. The questions are listed here for clarity as first read, second read, third read to show how the focus of questioning might change over multiple readings. You would decide, of course, how the questions were actually asked with each reading, how much time should pass between readings, and so forth.
Close Reading Leads to Deep Understanding, Writing, Collaboration, and Discussion… • Remember that close reading should be embedded in an instructional context that values not only the careful attention to text that the questions prompt, but also writing, collaboration, and talk. • The specific ways in which you balance these elements will vary, but the scaffolding provided by the text-dependent questions you prepared will likely connect them all.
Close Reading Protocol • Reading #1: Getting to Know the Text • Reading #2: Capturing the Gist • Reading #3: Responding to Rich, Evidence-Based Text-Dependent Questions
Overview: • These steps for close reading are specifically tailored for digging deeply into short passages of complex text. The complexity may arise from challenging Lexile levels in relation to your students’ readiness, from figurative language or abstract concepts, from unusual organization or structure, and/or from the complexity of the ideas within the text selection.
Process and Scaffolding: • This protocol may be chunked into smaller steps and spread over several days, especially the first time it is introduced to students. Each section has unique learning demands and requires prior skills in word attack strategies, using context clues, and annotating text. Students will benefit from teacher modeling of each part, practice time, and re-teaching before putting all the pieces together. • Gradually release the steps to students, providing less guidance and increasing their independence.
Steps: 1. Reading #1: Getting to know the text • Read the selection, silently or aloud based on preference and need. The purpose for this first reading is to enjoy the selection, to get a general sense of its flow and ideas, and to build fluency.
2. Reading #2: Capturing the gist • Re-read the selection individually or guided by teacher modeling, depending on student need. The purpose of this reading is to locate the most important information by building on what you know and making connections to unfamiliar words and phrases to make meaning. • Beginning with the first sentence, underline what you know and summarize the ideas with annotation above the line of text. Circle unfamiliar words or phrases. Continue through the first paragraph. • State the gist or central idea of the paragraph in your own words. Write it as a short phrase in the margin.
Reading #3: Teacher Frames Rich, Evidence-Based Text Dependent Questions • Reading #3: Teacher frames this stage with rich, evidence-based text-dependent questions that students focus on during this reading. This question may be centered on developing inferences or asking their own questions to dig for deeper information/ uncover assumptions and analyze arguments in the text, or it may be content-specific for building and expanding background knowledge.
Re-Read, Share and Discuss… • Students re-read targeted sections of the text and complete recording forms that drive at the text-dependent questions. • Share with a partner, noting areas of agreement and differences. • Share with whole group using a sharing or discussion protocol based on purpose and preference.
Strategies to Use While Close Reading • Chunk the text: • When faced with a full page of text, reading it can quickly become overwhelming for students. Breaking up the text into smaller sections (or chunks) makes the page much more manageable for students. Students do this by drawing a horizontal line between paragraphs to divide the page into smaller sections.
Strategies to Use While Close Reading • Underline and circle… with a purpose • Telling students to simply underline “the important stuff” is too vague. “Stuff” is not a concrete thing that students can identify. Instead, direct students to underline and circle very specific things. Think about what information you want students to take from the text, and ask them to look for those elements. What you have students circle and underline may change depending on the text type.
Strategies to Use While Close Reading • Underline and circle… with a purpose • Circling specific items is also an effective close reading strategy. Have students circle “Key terms” in the text. • Key terms: 1. Are defined. 2. Are repeated throughout the text. 3. If you only circled five key terms in the entire text, you would have a pretty good idea about what the entire text is about. You can also ask students to circle the names of sources, power verbs, or figurative language. Providing students with a specific thing you want them to underline or circle will focus their attention on that area much better than underlining important information.
Strategies to Use While Close Reading • Left margin: What is the author SAYING? • It isn’t enough to ask students to “write in the margins”. We must be very specific and give students a game plan for what they will write. This is where the chunking comes into play. • In the left margin, ask students to summarize each chunk. Demonstrate how to write summaries in 10-words or less. The chunking allows the students to look at the text in smaller segments, and summarize what the author is saying in just that small, specific chunk.
Strategies to Use While Close Reading • Right margin: Dig deeper into the text: • In the right-hand margin, direct students to complete a specific task for each chunk. This may include: • - Use a power verb to describe what the author is DOING. (For example: Describing, illustrating, arguing, etc..) • Note: It isn’t enough for students to write “Comparing” and be done. What is the author comparing? A better answer might be: “Comparing the character of Montag to Captain Beatty.” - Represent the information with a picture. This is a good way for students to be creative to visually represent the chunk with a drawing.
Strategies to Use While Close Reading • Ask Questions • When modeled, students can begin to learn how to ask questions that dig deeper into the text. These questions can be used as the conversation driver in Socratic Seminar. • Text Dependent Questions: • What is the author telling me here? • Are there any hard or important words? • What does the author want me to understand? • How does the author play with language to add to meaning?
Strategies to Use While Close Reading • Ask Questions • Text Dependent Questions: • What word(s) stand out? Why? (typically vivid words, unusual choices, or a contrast to what a reader expects) • How do particular words get us to look at characters or events in a particular way? Do they evoke an emotion? • Did the author use nonstandard English or words in another language? Why? What is the effect? • Are there any words that could have more than one meaning? Why might the author have played with language in this way?
Strategies to Use While Close Reading • Ask Questions • Text Dependent Questions: • Is the voice formal or informal? If it seems informal, how did the author make it that way? • If it's formal, what makes it formal? • Does the voice seem appropriate for the content? • What stands out about the way this sentence is written?
Strategies to Use While Close Reading • Paideia Discussion Structure: • Opening questions are intended to put the possibilities in the text into play quickly and should thus be quite general and “open ended.” Ideally, opening questions should elicit the greatest variety of responses and work best with maximum participation. Some good opening questions: • What might be another good title for this text? • What do you think is the main idea? • What do you notice first about this text?
Strategies to Use While Close Reading • Paideia Discussion Structure: • Core questions will require critical interpretation on the part of the student, and thus responses will likely vary. Because core questions are intended to foster a close reading of the text, however, it is important for students to understand that any interpretation needs to be supported by evidence within the text itself. Some other core questions: • How does the beginning of this text relate to the end? • What tensions do you notice in the text?
Strategies to Use While Close Reading • Paideia Discussion Structure: • Closing questions are intended to help students examine the rhetorical import of the text within the larger frameworks of local and global experience. • How can the message of the text be applied to your/our current situation? • What action, if any, does the text request of the reader? • What would happen if readers complied with that request??
Close Reading in Action… • When modeled, students can begin to learn how to ask questions that dig deeper into the text. These questions can be used as the conversation driver in Socratic Seminar. • Lets Look at Close Reading in Action: • Youtube: Common Core Literacy Close Reading Strategies with Informational Text (Middle Grades) • Youtube: Close Reading, Grade 10 (Fisher and Frey)
Let’s Try Some Close Reading… Read the article Spelunking by B. Wilkins and fill in the Teacher component of the Close Reading Template provided. Re-read the text two more times and each time, select a chunk of text and create a cognitively demanding text dependent question that relates to that piece of text. Next view So You Want to Go Caving? (Youtube) Keith Edwards. This time view the video and complete the Analyzing Details graphic organizer. Discuss findings in small and large group… Create a text-based writing prompt dealing with both texts.
Time to Process…. • Why is Close Reading key to a student’s success across multiple content areas? • How can the use of effective and ongoing Close Reading affect the way a student approaches reading and writing? • What information about Close Reading, specifically, has resonated with you? Explain your thoughts…
