Common Core Literacy: Close Reading Strategies with Information Text
Students in Andrew Hossack's 5th grade class use close reading strategies to determine the main idea and important details from a newspaper article about the
Seneca people.
http://vimeo.com/54007714
Andrew Hossak, AH
Student 1, Cambridge, red shirt
Student 2, Julian, gray hoodie
Student 3, Mr. Selpa, blue T-shirt
Student 4, Christian, orange small stripes shirt
Student 5, ?, large orange stripes shirt
Student 6, Jada, pink sweater
Student 7, close up, brown hair, classroom, purple dress
Student 8, close up, blue hoodie, black T-shirt;
Student 9, google eyes T-shirt
Student 10, plaid shirt sleeves
Note: As Mr. Hossak teaches, his own voice-over narration interrupts the classroom discourse with his insights and explanations. These narration “fade ins and outs” are indicated with ellipses
(…)
AH: Cambridge, Would you mind reading our first learning target today?
Cambridge:
‘I can get the gist and determine the main idea in a newspaper article about
…
AH Voice Over: The text I chose today was a newspaper article from the Buffalo News about a Seneca School called Faithkeepers that teaches a lot about Seneca language and culture.
…
AH: Look at some important words up here. What’s an important word in this learning target? Go ahead Julian.
Julian: Seneca
AH: The Seneca ….
AH Voice Over: Right now, the 5 th graders are studying culture through various case studies. M ainly they’re focusing in on indigenous Native American peoples of Western
New York
….
AH: What’s another important work that we’re look at? Mr. Selpa.
Mr. Selpa: Main idea
AH:
Main idea. What is that big idea that’s really important to the author?
AH Voice Over … An assessment that I had given to my students recently, I would notice that they weren’t picking out really important details, especially as they relate to the main idea. So this lesson was really designed to help kids see the connection between important details and main idea.
AH: What’s another important word that we’re looking at? Christian.
Christian: Gist
AH:
Gist. What is the gist? I’m asking you to jot the gist in the margin. What are you writing about?

Student 5: The important parts of the story or article.
AH: Yeah, What it’s about, right? Today we’re going to be starting a close read of a brand new text. I want you to think about all the close reading we’ve done before…
AH Voice Over :
We do a close reading process in my classroom, and it’s often a multiday process. The first time kids read, they’re reading just to get the flow of the text, from beginning to end. This is sort of a low-stakes moment in reading
AH:
….I want you to just read for the flow, alright, show some perseverance…
AH Voice Over: The second time they go back to the text, they are annotating it, in several different ways, in order to help them understand it.
AH: …Circling important words and jotting the gist in the margins. If you’re having a hard time with this, if text feels really difficult to you, what is something you can do as a reader to help you to get through it and make it a little more manageable?
Jada: Get the gist in baby steps.
AH: Get the gist in baby steps. Take bite-sized sections, little paragraphs, right?
“Do I understand this paragraph, do I understand this paragraph,
” and go through section by section.
Student 7: (close up) I started reading the article by reading the whole thing just for the flow. …
AH: Voice Over I used to do more a lot more scaffolding and pre-reading activities before I let kids have a turn with the text. Something I’ve noticed about my students is that now that they are used to reading text on their own, for the first time, trying it out on their own, they’ve shown a lot more perseverance…
Student 7 : (close up) And then I read it again, and underlined all the important words, like “traditional,” “school,” and some of the names.
AH Voice Over: Choosing a text is always a really important process for me when teaching something like this. I was really looking for something that was an authentic text, something from a primary source, like a newspaper article. Something within what they were studying so that it had a real purpose for them when reading it, something that was complex, something that pushed them, something that taught them new vocabulary, new academic vocabulary.
Student 8: (close up) After every section I read, I wrote the gist down. Then I went back to the paragraph to see if I was right. Then I went to the next.
AH Voice Over: I gave my whole class the same complex text. And one reason for this is that we found differentiation is less about text complexity and more about the amount of text students are asked to work with. For some students, they are able to differentiate for themselves by chunking the text into smaller pieces.
Student 9: (close up) I’m getting the gist for two paragraphs at a time… “Zimmin Dowdy and his wife Sandy started the Seneca Faithkeepers…
AH Voice Over: For other students, we actually break the text up for them so that they only see a smaller amount of text at a time and don’t become overwhelmed by the idea of what they are about to read.
AH: … So look back at the title, look at some of the important details you underlined, look at the gist you wrote, I want you to write your idea for this, what do you think is the main idea of this article is. And then in about two minutes, we’re going to transition ourselves over to the carpet area to continue the second half of our lesson . We read

about it, we thought about it, we wrote about it, now we get a chance to talk about it.
Jada, do you mind reading our second Learning Target for today?
Jada: “I can explain the connection between details and the main ideas in an article about the Seneca people.
”
AH: You’re going to choose one person near you and you’re talking about what do you think the main idea in this article is and then what is one thing in the article, one little sentence that helped you come up with that main ide a. …
AH Voice Over: So in the activity today, I really wanted the students to build a connection between important details and the main idea
AH: …The Seneca culture is dying, so they started a school to learn the culture. …
AH Voice Over: So I chose the details I wanted them to work with and hung them on charts around the classroom. Students moved around in groups with post-it notes, read the detail, and had to make a case on whether or not that detail was important and connect it to the main idea. Working with complex text can be really challenging, and these kids are ten years old, so they get really antsy, so I try to design my lessons in ways that give them time to get up and move around the room.
Student 5 : Just because if you don’t speak the language and they don’t get …
Student 10:
Because it’s part of their culture!
Student 5 : Right. …
AH Voice Over : I try to get kids talk to each other about text as much as possible. It allows them to understand parts of text they didn’t understand on their own but can get from a peer….
AH: I want to debrief with this question: What detail did you think was important? How did it connect to the main idea?
Student 8:
The one about the children learn about traditional song…(close up) One of the details I thought was important on the wall was that some of the traditions are like for the Seneca people are singing and dancing… (classroom) I thought that was an important detail because it tells you the tradition.
Student 7: “Ninety-nine percent of Senecas don’t know how to speak the Seneca language” because that’s about how their culture is dying because they don’t know how to speak their own language.
AH : Yeah, so that one really goes back to the first part of the main idea, where we said tha t the Seneca culture is dying….
AH Voice Over: I use a close reading protocol because it gives the kids predictability in how they approach a text and they’ve shown themselves much more willing to deal with a challenge.
AH: OK, let’s do one more. What’s a detail? Mr. Selpa?
Mr. Selpa
: I did “Attending school is a major commitment for the young people and their parents.” …