Close Reading: �An Opportunity for Rigor

Suzanne J. Skipper Triumph Learning

Common Core:

! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s0rRk9sER0

Rationale for Close Reading:

!   Rigor in the classroom-or rather lack of it.

!   Rigor is not an attribute of a text, but rather a characteristic of our behavior with that text.

!   The essence of rigor is engagement and commitment.

Points To Ponder:

!   What is my own definition of rigor?

!   How do my colleagues define rigor?

!   What do I think--can a student be encouraged to think rigorously about a text that is at his or her independent reading level?

!   If I needed to make a checklist of practices that new teachers could use to help them decide if their classrooms would be called rigorous, what would I include?

What Is Close Reading?

!   Close reading implies that we bring the text and the reader close together.

!   Close reading should suggest close attention to the text and close attention to the relevant experience.

Doug Fisher: �Close REading

! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w9v6-zUg3Y

Characteristics:

!   Start with a short passage.

!   The focus is intense.

!   Extend from the passage itself to other parts of the text.

!   Should involve significant exploratory discussion.

!   Must involve rereading.

Discussion:

!   Does a text have to be “complex” for one to read closely?

!   What habits and dispositions do I need to instill in students when they are reading multimedia texts?

!   What motivates you to pay particular close attention to a portion of a text? What do you do during the close reading process? Take notes? Annotate?

!   Is close reading different for fiction and nonfiction?

!   Find a short text that is challenging.

!   Read the selection aloud to students as they follow along.

!   Tell them that as they read, they should mark those spots where they feel confused, have a question or wonder about something.

!   Ask them to reread the selection.

Immediate Instructional Practice:

!   Pull the whole class back together, collect on the board the questions that have been generated.

!   In pairs or trios, ask them to look at the questions they think are most interesting or important, discuss them and make notes about their thoughts.

!   Pull the class back together and work through some of the more interesting questions.

!   Decide what follow-up is needed.

!   Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

•  Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

!   Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address excerpt

Sample Questions:

!   What is four score and seven years ago?

!   Why is he speaking about a New Nation ?

!   What is a proposition?

!   What is the great war, or Civil War?

!   Who is at war and why are they still at war?

!   Why are people giving their lives so that more can live?

Further questions:

!   Is this religious? About becoming religious?

!   Is this saying that if you do everything God wants then you are “clothed in Holy robes for glory?”

!   Do you have to become super religious to be complete?

!   What if you say to God to do all this stuff to you but then nothing changes, like no holy robes, does that mean God failed?

Educator directed questions:

!   Is there evidence that this narrator is concerned?

!   Is there evidence that if both sides don’t communicate the Civil War will continue?

!   What specific lines indicate the evidence? CITE TEXTUAL EVIDENCE

Signposts: !   Contrasts/Contradictions:

!   Aha Moment:

!   Tough Questions:

!   Words of the Wiser:

!   Again and Again:

!   Memory Moment:

!   Resource: Beers, K. & Probst, R. (2013) Notice & Note, Heinemann

Writing:

!   Susan Pinnel: Argumentative Writing

Planning:

!   Write your own questions PRIOR to the lesson

!   Close Reading

!   Writing

!   Academic Conversation

!   Continue to follow Commoncore.com for more information

!   Next webinar: Alan Sitomer, January 30, 5:30 pm EST