Close(er) Reading: Resources and Ideas for Moving Forward--Part 3

Our instructional leadership team was working with the Iowa Professional Development Model last week and we were reviewing the four components of quality professional development:

• Theory
• Demonstration
• Practice
• Collaboration/Coaching

We reflected that sometimes, in order to understand something, we just need to 'see it in action.'  Some video clips on close reading from The Teaching Channel provide just that opportunity.

Think Notes is a video demonstration in a high school English Language Arts classroom.  This strategy helps students think about their responses to text and respond in deeper level discussions.  How might you adapt this for your grade level/content area?

Author's Choices another high school English Language Arts classroom looks at craft and structure through the analysis of the author's choices.

Developing Iowa Core Habits--Close Reading this elementary-based lesson models applying close reading to an arts-integrated lesson.

I hope these resources provide additional demonstrations to support your professional learning around close reading!

Close(er) Reading: Resources and Ideas for Moving Forward--Part 2

To continue with ideas to further support close reading, below are some ideas from a webinar I participated in.

A Webinar

I recently participated in a webinar--Close Reading: Teaching the Comprehension Skills of Text Analysis and Evaluation.  This webinar was sponsored by ASCD and facilitated by Diane Lapp, Barbara Moss, Maria Grant, and Kelly Johnson.

As I participated, there were many review ideas, some new ideas, and some particularly useful ideas for management and planning.  A handout provided additional support and may be accessed here.

As teachers continue to implement close reading, I think there are some questions as to how to put it all together.  A few of these handouts gave some ideas that might help us think further about what this could look like in our classrooms.  I particularly liked this organizer as it modeled how close reading could be used across the curriculum:

There was also a nice form to collect formative assessment data during close reading.  This connected to yesterday's blog on contingency plans when students struggle with close reading.  I would like to work on an organizer that combines both of these ideas.

That organizer might look like this:

Preplanned Text Dependent Questions	Observations of Students (Who is confused? What are misconceptions?)	Contingency Plan (Re-establish purpose, Analyze questions, Prompt and Cue, Model Thinking, Analyze Annotations)

And finally, a form for planning, teaching, and managing close reading.  

I am looking forward to implementing some of these tools.  What resources do you find most useful when implementing close reading?

Close(er) Reading: Resources and Ideas for Moving Forward-Part 1

        As I visit classrooms and work with teachers, I am seeing many wonderful close reading lessons.  This is a concept that I am also designing lessons for to expand my own learning.  The more close reading is implemented, the more we can reflect and learn in order to use this technique to support deep, analytic reading on the part of our students.

      I have recently read or viewed 3 resources that have helped me think more about close reading: an article, a webinar, and teaching videos.  Below is a summary of the article.  Stay tuned to future blogs for a summary of the webinar and teaching videos.

An Article

        Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey have an article in the new edition of The Reading Teacher--"Contingency Teaching During Close Reading."  A teacher from their study noted that when students were getting stuck during  a close reading lesson, she found herself telling student the answers or finding the information for them. She knew that this was not the goal of close reading, so she wanted additional scaffolds for when students get stuck.  Fisher and Frey identify 5 contingency plans when students struggle with close reading:

1.  Re-establish purpose: revisit and remind students of the learning target for the lesson.

2.  Analyze questions: consider cueing students on the relationship between questions and their answers.  QAR is an effective technique for providing this support.

3.  Prompt and Cue: As teachers, sometimes it is our nature to provide help to our students when often they just need a little hint to make things 'click.'  Fisher and Frey offer a chart of prompts and cues to use during close reading.

 www.reading.org                                                       

                        

4.  Model Thinking: Hearing an adult share their thinking can support student's own thinking during close reading.  Using a frame such as this can support this modeling: "I think _______________ because the author told me ____________.

5.  Analyze Annotations: Think about collecting and using student annotations as a formative data point, much like an exit slip or a quick write.

“Contingency Teaching During Close Reading” by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey in The Reading Teacher, December 2014/January 2015 (Vol. 68, #4, p. 277-286)

The Sounds of Silence--Do We Crave or Dread?

I have read some things in the past week or so that have given me pause.

First, this paragraph from a blog post from John Spencer (@edrethink) titled "My Biggest Concern with Devices."

"I wonder if the constant stream of conversations in social media are making it too difficult for people to be alone. Collectively, we've grown edgy with silence. We have a hard time with being alone with our own minds without being digitally tethered to other people. The problem is not that we have grown anti-social. The real problem is that we are social all the time."

--John Spencer

And then, this quote from the beginning of Chapter 3 of The Multiplier Effect by Wiseman, Allen, and Foster (Corwin, 2013).

"Between stimulus and response there is space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

--Viktor E. Frankl

Those of us in education are used to noise.  Lots of it.  So you would think when we leave the school environment we would crave silence.  But I find myself filling that space--radio, music, TV.....

Have we grown 'edgy with silence?'  Does wait time in the classroom make us uncomfortable?  Is there wait time, or do we or our students jump to fill it in?  I make myself physically count off the seconds in my head when I am presenting or teaching--yet still I know I miss countless opportunities for reflective silence.   And while there are never enough hours in a day, 3 minutes of silent thinking or writing feels like forever.

In leadership training, we learn about the power of reflective practice.  And I have made attempts to improve on this.  But with so much information available, I click and read, click and read.  I'm reading more, but reflecting less.

And then along came our instructional leadership team's blogging challenge.  I started to blog because I am a wee bit competitive.  (Oh and to be a good model--yes, that's it--to be a good model!)   But a few things happened along the way.  First, I was so inspired by our teacher leaders--their courage in new roles and their honest reflections about the journey and their growth.  This inspired me to be more thoughtful and reflective in my own writing.  And true to what we know about the reading/writing connection, now when I read blogs or articles, I read more deeply and thoughtfully.  So with this inspiration comes commitment--taking time to be reflective in this blog space.  Using silence as a space to think, wonder, and create.  For ourselves and for our students.

I want to close with the Frankl quote again because it becomes more powerful to me each time I read it.

"Between stimulus and response there is space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

--Viktor E. Frankl

Shhhhh..........