Close Reading
Close reading involves critically analyzing and evaluating texts. Modeling, reading guides, and class discussions can scaffold students' close reading of texts. However, if we only ask them questions that they could answer without doing the reading, then they aren’t learning anything new. They are merely remembering their own experiences or expressing the perspectives that they already held. In order to ask questions that help deepen students' experiences with texts and learn from texts, we must examing the question and answer relationships and use that knowledge to design text-dependent questions that can guide students to close read.
Question Answer Relationships
When creating questions to guide and extend students thinking, it’s helpful to think about the question and answer relationship. It’s also a helpful test taking strategy for students to determine the question answer relationship. There are four different types of questions.
Right there (text-dependent) - the answer is in the text and the words used to find the answer are the same as in the question
Think and search (text-dependent) - the answer is in the text but you have to put together different parts of the text to answer
Author and me (text-dependent) - the answer is not in the text, you have to think about what you already know, what the author tells you, and how it fits together
In my head - You use your imagination or your experiences to answer the question
Reading guides often begin by asking students in my head questions to connect the reading to students' lives and experiences or right there questions because they are lower-order thinking. The other two types then build upon these answers. Additionally, reading guides use a variety of question answer relationships to guide students’ comprehension and then to help students extend their thinking and become critical readers.
Writing Text-Dependent Questions
Text-dependent questions ask students to focus on the purpose and structure of the texts. Watch the first video that explains what text-dependent questions are and see how teachers scaffold close reading.
Close reading is slow reading. We slow down and pay close attention to the words and structure of the text. To do this, we often will read a text multiple times. Multiple readings helps build fluency and allows us to dig into the deeper meanings of a text. Watch the video below to see how the first grade teacher focuses on text structure during the first read and then details from the text on the second read.
This infographic explains way to write text-dependent think and search as well as author and me questions.
Focus on Close Reading Classroom Example
Modeling Close Reading
To model close reading, you can reread a short, worthy passage of the text as a whole class. Ask students text-dependent author-and-me questions to analyze not only what but how the author is communicating. Model how to provide evidence from the text that backs the claim. The sentence stems on the next page can facilitate evidence-based reasoning. Then, students could further the discussion with whether they agree or disagree with the author and each other with their own evidence from their own experiences.
Annotating Texts
As we guide students to be independent close readers, we can teach them how to annotate texts when close reading. For example, students can annotate text with cause and effects with a C next to causes and E next to effects (Beerwinkle, 2018). To promote students ability to close read texts independently, we can model general annotating texts and then gradually release the responsibility of annotating to students.
A strategy for annotating is to have students identify main ideas with a triangle, looking for at least three. To draw a square around ideas that resonate with them and circle ideas that they have questions about. And, then build on that strategy to then ask students to star main ideas, looking for at least five, and adding an arrow where students can push back or critique.
Explore this linked article paying special attention to Ms. Zucker's bullet points for how she teaches annotation in secondary school.
Graphic Organizers
Graphic organizers are a great scaffold to help students analyze text structure and more! Check out this Cult of Pedagogy blog and the following resource with a ton of graphic organizers to use in your classroom.
