Close Reading

Close Reading...it is the "new" teaching approach that is all the craze now, but what is it? There are many different teaching philosophies out there that try to explain this technique. In New York, creators of EnageNY believe that children should be reading challenging and rigorous texts multiple times. Their idea of "challenging" and "rigorous" are texts that are often too difficult for children to read. As a Reading Specialist, I do not agree with this method. Put a frustrational text in front of a child and ask him/her to read it not only once, but many times, when they can't decode many of the words nor comprehend them, is only going to create more frustration.

Some ideas around close reading include reading the text once to get the overall gist. Reading it again to circle any unfamiliar words and derive their meaning. Reading it again to find supporting details to support the gist. Another reading for perhaps the author's message. All the while, students are jotting their notes all around the paper. I've tried this approach with students and I have to say that it doesn't create a deeper meaning of the text. Students...especially struggling students get quite frustrated and have a difficult time. Can we scaffold it? Absolutely. But, the question I raise is when is there too much scaffolding? Surely, if we are spoon feeding children the information they aren't really reading, are they?

While in Cabridge at Lesley University during my week of Ongoing PD as a Literacy Collaborative Coach, we spent a day reading and discussing the text, Falling in Love with Close Reading. While this text is geared toward MS teachers, I think that we can bring it down to the level of elementary teachers. The thinking is to take a common text, i.e. a read aloud (excerpt) that has already been read to the class, and use it to practice the art of close reading. Teachers would have mini lessons around a specific skill that they would like their students to focus on for a few days. We practiced this skill together while focusing on word choice, more specifically imagery. Here are some of the mini lessons that we created:

(Please excuse my messy handwriting and the scribbles!)

The idea is that on Day 1- students will just notice specific language that the author used to create an image in their mind and we'd discuss and chart those noticings. On Day 2- students will then categorize the images that they noticed to find patterns in the text. For example, we used an excerpt from Ray Bradbury's All Summer in a Day, and we noticed that the author created imagery around specific aspects of the text: the weather, Margot, and the other children. These images would be categorized. The next day, students would look at those patterns to create a deeper understanding of the text: what is the author's purpose for creating these patterns of imagery?

By using this method, students focus on a specific skill and a piece of a text to understand the whole. Students are engaging in a deeper thinking of texts. We are building thinkers and that deep thinking that students are doing through inquiry creates rigor by thinking about a text in a complex way. It is not about taking away the love of reading, as other methods seem to accomplish.

I will leave you with a quote from Lehman & Roberts (2014):
"Rigor is less about how challenging a text or task is, and more about what knowledge a student draws on to reason deeply."

What are your thoughts on Close Reading?