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What Does The Text Say?:
A VETERAN TEACHER Develops A New
set of Tricks for Teaching Students to
READ
Closely and Critically
ELA Summer Literacy Academy 2014
Ronette Burnett
Creekside Intermediate School
Harris County Schools
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Before CCGPS:
Sailing Through the Standards!
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After CCGPS:
The Old Dog Realizes the need for Some New Tricks
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Ccgps ELA Instructional shifts
1. Balancing informational and literary text
2 . Literacy is a shared responsibility across all content areas.
3. Students are exposed to increasingly complex texts.
4. text-based response and close reading.
5. Writing from sources
6. Academic vocabulary
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Shifts sounds Gentle
But It Actually felt more like -
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THE REAL EQ (Exasperating
Question)
HOW DO I Change? (My classroom, my Teaching, MYSELF)
What Do I Need
to Let GO?
What DO I Need to
Grab On TO?
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The Essential Question
How Can I Help My Students read Complex
Texts Critically with The Level of Analysis
Specified in our standards ?
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Part One: Close Reading
What It Is
and
(What It’s Not)
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Close Reading Is NotYou Might Have
Called it
“Marking My
Book So I won’t
Flunk Out!”
Reading
‘
NEW
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CLOSE READING Is NotEasy
Close reading is
done with
Complex texts.
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Close Reading Is Not
The Only Type of reading to use
Students Need
A variety of
Reading
Experiences.
Shared
Reading
Read Aloud
Recreational
reading
Guided
Reading
Close
Reading
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Close Reading Is
A Skill Needed on The New GA Milestones ELA Assessment
From Assessment Update: Georgia’s Changing Assessment Landscape, GA Dept. of Ed. June 2014
Georgia Milestones English Language Arts [CC Georgia Performance
Standards]
– will require close analytic reading to construct meaning,
make inferences, draw conclusions, compare and contrast
ideas, themes, etc., as well as synthesize ideas and
concepts across multiple texts
– will require students to develop informative/explanatory
responses or narratives, produce opinions/arguments –
citing evidence from text(s) and using standard language
conventions, etc.
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Close Reading Defined
Close, analytic reading stresses
engaging with a text of sufficient
complexity directly and examining
meaning thoroughly and methodically,
encouraging students to read and
reread deliberately.(PARCC, 2011, p. 7)
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Close Reading is Like
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Close Reading Is
Deep Comprehension
Authors thoughtfully select details, hoping that
we, the readers, are listening. When we take the
time to do so, as carefully as we listen to the
people we love, we see the complexity of ideas
that reach beyond the page and impact our
lives.
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A Closer Look At Close
reading
Close Reading
Strategies from
Notice and Note
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Work with a short passage
Opinion
Life
Text Suggestions from: Lehman, C. and Roberts, K, (2014). Falling in Love with Close Reading. Portsmouth, NH , Heinemann.
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Start with media
photos
What do you
observe
in this Picture?
Based on your
observations,
What message
Does This
photograph
convey?
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Country music is one of the last vestiges for
soulful, introspective, clever lyrics.
Harry Connick Jr. American Idol, March 5, 2014.
Song lyrics
“Automatic” by Miranda Lambert
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Focus intensely on The Passage
Itself
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Involves Rereading
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#closereading
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Engagement isn’t A thing,
It’s the only thing!
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Part Two – Close Reading:
These are a few of my favorite Things
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Wikki Stix
Use with all ages For Finding Text-Based Evidence
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Pointers, Post-its, and projected text
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Highlighters and apps
Annotations, anyone?
iAnnotate
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Trash or treasure?
Adapting a note taking technique to use with textual evidence.
Although it might seem as though skimming is the opposite of close reading
(and in a way, it is), it is also a crucial skill for pulling information out of a text.
Sarah Tantillo. “Skimming: The Overlooked Close Reading Skill.”
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So much drama
Reader’s theater for close reading strategy instruction
Reader’s
Theater
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Set it to music
What does the text Say?: A strategy lesson set to music
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Part Three: now what?
Getting started
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Close reading confessions
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Close reading confession # 1
I’m still learning how to teach this.
There’s more than one way to teach close reading (and apparently I am trying them
all!) My initial lessons were based more on the Beers and Probst Signpost lessons in
Notice and Note. Now, I am drawn to the close reading ritual found in Falling in Love
with Close Reading- Choose a lens, look for patterns, then develop new ideas.
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Close reading confession # 2
My students don’t actually read the text. Instead they ______ (fill in
the blank with a reading avoidance behavior.)
So I tried monitoring silent reading. This is something I’ve always done during guided reading, and it’s
great to keep everyone on task during close reading. It involves walking around asking students to
whisper read a section of text to me. This helps me manage and support struggling and reluctant readers.
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Close Reading confession #3
One pattern I
see is _____ with
words like _____.
My students can Talk about the close reading text, but the writing about
the text is a real struggle.
So now I teach sentence frames.
These sentence frames can help scaffold students’ thinking-literally giving their thoughts a
running start so that they can just focus on the content and not on the syntax of their ideas.
Falling in Love with Close Reading, p. 42
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Sentence frames
Point of view
Brobow, R. (2011, October ). “Confessions of a teenage concussion
queen.”Scholastic Scope, p.9
I think the author wants me to think that . . .
If the author was debating this topic, they would say
...
The author doesn’t say anything about . . . which
makes me think . . .
Some feeling words the author uses are __________,
_____________, and __________, which tells me
that the author probably feels . . . about the topic.
The author seems to believe that . .
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Close reading confession #4
Some of the Complex texts I need students to read Closely are beyond
My students’ skill level so I _____ . ( What do you do?)
Keep working on helping students read on a higher level, but
I don’t abandon the suggested text because it is too hard.
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THANK YOU!