Close Reading
Preparing for the arrival of Common Core Standards in
Social Studies
Common Standards
• We are preparing our students to be
college ready and literate.
• The Common Core Standards will not
replace Social Studies Standards.
• We want our students to read, to write, to
listen and to speak proficiently.
Common Core Standards:
Goals in Social Studies
• We want our students to engage in
– high quality literary text
– informational text
– thoughtful discussion of text
• With the development of reading skills,
our students will be able to improve
content knowledge, reasoning skills and
thoughtful citizens.
What is Social Studies Role?
• Grades 9th through 12th Grades,
students will focus on 30% of literary
text and 70% will be on informational
text.
• According to Tim Shanahan,
Informational text provides information
about the social or natural world, and
deals with classes of objects and
experiences rather than individual
instances.
What is Social Studies Role?
• Social Studies teachers needs to
assist English teachers in covering
informational text.
• The students will continue to be
exposed to fiction, drama, and
poetry in their English classes.
• Social Studies classes and English
classes must collaborate in
selection of reading material.
Role of Social Studies in Reading
• According to Fisher, Frey and Lapp,
teachers can assist in reading by
comprehension, word solving, text
structures and text features.
• Social Studies teachers can help with
visualizing, inferring, summarizing,
predicting, questioning or monitoring.
Common Core and Reading
• Goal 1: students will be able to
understand and clarify “unknown
and multiple-meaning words and
phrases by using context clues.”
• Goal 2 : students will be able to
analyze the text.
• Goal 3: students will be able to
provide evidence to support their
opinions.
Reading Questions
We will need to teach our
students how to read and
to think about complex
text!
How do we achieve
those skills?
What is Close Reading?
• It allows the reader to focus on
details, patterns and meaning of the
text.
• Common Core Standards emphasize
that students should be able to focus
and to understand the text they are
reading. (What is the author’s
purpose?)
Close Reading and our students
• Students will be able to ponder thought
provoking questions.
• They will focus on vocabulary and how it
influences the meaning of the text.
• They will read the text closely
Close Reading
• According to Beers and Probst, we want
the students to note, to think, to reread
and to closely look at the text.
Text Complexity: higher level thinking
• The Common Core State Standards are
the first to require text complexity as a
specific standard: “Read and comprehend
complex literary and informational texts
independently and proficiently.”
(CCRA.R.10)
Factors associated with Text Complexity
Vocabulary
Academic and domain-specific terms
Tier 2 vocabulary: high utility complex words that can
be used in multiple contexts
Syntax
Coherence—Are the events and concepts logically
connected and clearly explained?
Unity—Do the ideas focus on the topic and not
include irrelevant or distracting information?
Audience appropriateness—Does the text match the
background knowledge of the target reader?
Factors associated with Text Complexity
• Text structures
Description of what is being read.
Compare and Contrast
Sequence of Events
Cause and Effect
Problem and Solution
Text features
-Headings/subheadings
-Signal words
-Graphs, pictures and captions
Close Reading Characteristics
• The text needs to be short.
• The focus needs to be intense.
• The text needs to lend itself to other parts
of text.
• The text should allow for exploratory
discussion.
• Students will reread the text.
Students and Text-Dependent Questions
• Find a short text for the students.
• The class reads the text together.
• Students will mark the text where they are
confused or have questions about the
text.
• Students will reread the text- they try to
understand the section they marked.
Students and Text-Dependent Questions
• The class shares the questions that they
have about the text.
• The students will pair-share their
questions and answers.
• As a class, the students will share their
responses.
• Students will continue to explore the text
and continue to write their questions and
answers.
Types of Questions: General Understanding
• What is the author claiming in the text?
• What is the arc of the story?
• What is the sequence of information?
Types of Questions: Key Details
• These questions can be based on important
information that the author is conveying.
• For example the five W’s can be used.
–
–
–
–
–
–
Who was the key character ?
What are the differences between events?
Where does it state the reasons for the change?
When did the event change the direction of the text?
Why did the event occur?
How did these events affect the change?
• These questions are specific to key information.
Types of Questions: Vocabulary & Text
Structure
• These types of questions help the
students to focus on the organization of
the text and word use.
• These questions help students to
understand how words convey feelings or
ideas.
• The use of word choice, figurative
language, idioms and confusing words or
phrases will help students understand the
meaning of the text.
Types of Questions: Purpose
• Understanding the purpose of the text helps
students to follow the flow of the text.
• The questions guide the students to understand
the purpose of the text.
–
–
–
–
To inform
To persuade
To entertain
To explain
• In addition, students learn to understand bias
and perspective the text.
Types of Questions: Inference
• Reading the text allows the students to
see the whole picture.
• If it is a persuasive essay, the students
will search for its arguments.
• If it is a informational text, they will search
for key information.
• If it is a literary text, they will probe for key
details.
Types of Questions: Opinions, Arguments and
Intertextual Connections
• These questions will be asked after the
students have read the text several times.
• The questions will ask the students their
opinions but they must be able to defend
them with evidence from the text.
Progression of Text-Dependent Questions
Whole
Opinions, Arguments and
Intertextual Connections
Author’s Purpose
Across Texts
Entire Text
Inferences
Segments
Paragraph
Sentence
Key Details
Word
Part
General Understanding
Source: Frey, N
A Different Method of Thinking about
Text-Dependent Questions
• ANALYZE paragraphs on a sentence by sentence
basis and sentences on a word by word basis to
determine the role played by individual paragraphs,
sentences, phrases, or words
• INVESTIGATE how meaning can be altered by
changing key words and why an author may have
chosen one word over another
• PROVE each argument in persuasive text, each idea
in informational text, each key detail in literary text,
and observe how these build to a whole
A Different Method of Thinking about
Text-Dependent Questions
• EXAMINE how shifts in the direction of an argument
or explanation are achieved and the impact of those
shifts
• QUESTION why authors choose to begin and end
when they do
• NOTE and ASSESS patterns of writing and what they
achieve
• CONSIDER what the text leaves uncertain or unstated
At the end of the day, we want our students to
do the following:
Read
Comprehend
Revisit and
Analyze the Text
What we want for our students?
• We want our students to be independent
thinkers.
• We want our students to have strong
content knowledge.
• We want our students to comprehend and
to critique what they are reading.
• We want our students to value evidence.
Sources
• Notice and Note by Kylene Beers and Robert E.
Probst
• Text Complexity by Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey
and Diane Lapp.
• A Close Look at Close Reading by Beth Burke
• Common core language arts in a PLC at work
by Nancy Frey and Douglass Fisher
• Text- Dependent Questions by Nancy Frey and
Douglass Fisher