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)