Common Core Georgia Performance

StandardsMaking Challenging Texts Accessible,

K-12Part 3: Teaching Students How to Close Read a Text

Cynde Snider

Essential Question

How can I help students become competent readers of complex texts?

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Learning Target

I can explain a systematic process for teaching the close reading of complex texts.

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What is Close Reading?Close Reading – A careful and deliberate reading and rereading of a complex text to determine such things as explicit meaning, craft/structure, author’s purpose, bias, and underlying meanings, etc. Readers may respond to text-based questions, determine word meanings contextually, evaluate arguments, use textual evidence to support a theme or warranted conclusion, etc.

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Purpose of Close Reading

Students need the knowledge and skills to determine, independently, explicit and implicit meanings in texts they have never seen before and to locate and use evidence from these texts to support the meanings they determine.

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Developing Close Reading Skills

Stages of the Close Reading Process

First Reading—figuring out what the text says (literal comprehension)

Second Reading—figuring out how the text works (craft and structure)

Third Reading—figuring out what the text means (interpretation/deep understanding)

Source: Shanahan, T. (June 18, 2012). What is close reading? Shanahan on Literacy. Retrieved from http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/2012/06/what-is-close-reading.html.

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Close Reading Graphic

Teaching Close Reading

1. Part to whole a. Provide explicit instruction related to the outer circles

of the close reading graphic, one at a time; for example, focus one or more lessons or mini-lessons on diction.

b. Apply learning on the specific element to a number of texts over a relatively short time.

c. Repeat a. and b. with a second element (point of view/ perspective, for example).

d. Continue to repeat, as relevant, to build students’ grade-appropriate tool boxes, while also moving students toward more independent close reading.

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Part to Whole Note

Part to whole close reading is CUMULATIVE—that is, once students have added an element such as diction to their toolboxes, they can continue to use this tool as they add others to their toolboxes.

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Teaching Close Reading

2. Whole to parta. Begin with a complex, short text or passage.b. Have students read text silently before listening to teacher (or a recorded reader) read it aloud.c. Work through the text slowly, in small segments (phrases, clauses, sentences) asking students

to paraphrase, summarize, or respond to text dependent questions.d. Repeat the process with increasingly complex and or longer texts while also moving students

toward more independent close reading.

For multiple examples of whole to part, see: http://www.achievethecore.org/steal-these-tools/close-reading-exemplars

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What About Pre-Reading?

Purpose of Close Reading

Students need the knowledge and skills to determine, independently, explicit and implicit meanings in texts they have never seen before and to locate and use evidence from these texts to support the meanings they determine.

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Learning Target

I can explain a systematic process for teaching the close reading of complex texts.

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Essential Question

How can I help students become competent readers of complex texts?

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Resources—Close Reading

Close reading exemplars (2012). Student Achievement Partners. Retrieved from http://www.achievethecore.org/steal-these-tools/close-reading-exemplars.

Kain, P. (1998). How to do a close reading. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Retrieved from http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr/documents/CloseReading.html.

Shanahan on Literacy. (June 18, 2012). What is close reading? Retrieved from http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/2012/06/what-is-close-reading.html.

Shanahan on Literacy. (July 12, 2012). Planning for close reading. Retrieved from http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/2012/07/planning-for-close-reading.html.

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Cynde SniderGeorgia Department of Education

csnider@doe.k1.ga.us404-657-9971

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