Close reading workshop
- 1. Close Reading Literacy in all Content Areas
- 2. Objectives for Today • Understand the importance of literacy in all content areas. • Identify strategies one could use to conduct a close reading with students. • Practice using these strategies with a text. • Select text to write a unit aligned with the Common Core.
- 3. Why? • Students are not prepared for the rigors of college. • According to the NAEP, 70 percent of middle and high school students score below the “proficient” level of reading. • Since the 1960s, there has been a steady decline in the difficulty and sophistication of the content of texts students have been asked to read. • Advanced literacy across content areas is the best available predictor of students’ ability to succeed in introductory college courses.
- 4. Why? • Students are not prepared for the demands of the work place. • About 40 percent of employers indicate they are dissatisfied with high school graduates’ ability to read and understand complicated materials, think analytically and solve real-world problems. • Employers feel that more than half of recent high school graduates are weak in skills such as oral and written communications, problem solving, and critical thinking. • The twenty-five fastest growing professions have literacy demands that are far greater than average, while the fastest-declining professions have lower-than-average literacy demands.
- 5. Literacy Demands in Our Classrooms • Text Complexity • http://www.corestandards.org/assets/Appendix_A. pdf • Grade Level Appropriate Text • http://www.corestandards.org/assets/Appendix_B. pdf • Rigorous Writing Tasks Using Details from Text • http://www.corestandards.org/assets/Appendix_C. pdf
- 6. Close Reading and the Common Core • The Anchor Reading Standards Focus on: • Key Ideas and Details in a text • Craft and Structure • Integration of Knowledge and Ideas • Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
- 7. When writing questions… • Always follow up the question with statements such as: • Point to this in the text. • Use details from the text. • How do you know? • Support your answer with the text. • What effect does/do these choices make? • ***The next few slides will show a question but not the follow up statement that directs them to use the text for support.***
- 8. Question 1: What does the text say? • How would you summarize or determine a shortened version of the text containing only the main points? CCR1,2 • What is the central idea? CCR2 • What is the specific textual evidence used to support the central idea? CCR1 • What are the most important ideas/events? CCR1,2 • What are the ideas in order of importance or presentation? CC1 • What ideas might the author be suggesting rather than directly stating? What can you infer from these hints or suggestions? CCR1
- 9. Question 2: How does the text say it? • 1. What genre does the selection represent? CCR5 • 2. How does the piece open-exposition, lead, etc.? CCR5 • 3. Whose voice did the author choose as narrator? CCR3 • 4. From what point of view was this written? CCR3 • 5. What are the sources of information and fact? Is there more than one source of information? CCR3 • 6. What role does dialogue play in the text? CCR3 • 7. How is the information organized (for example, time, topic, cause and effect, compare/contrast, persuasion)? CCR5
- 10. More Question 2: How does the text say it? • 8. What language is used-dialect variant spellings, archaic words etc.? CCR4 • 9. What are the style, mood and tone? CCR4 • 10. What word choice, imagery and figures of speech (for example, simile, metaphor, alliteration, irony, repetition, personification, etc.) does the author use? CCR4 • 11. What diction and sentence structure does the author use, and how do the sections of the text relate to each other-from the sentence and paragraph levels to the section and chapter levels? CCR4
- 11. Question 3: What does the text mean? • 1. What is the central idea/thesis/theme of the text? CCR2 • 2. How does the author support the central idea, thesis, or theme with ideas and details? CCR2 • 3. What are the purposes, ends and objectives? CCR2 • 4. What is the author’s stance/perspective towards the topic? CCR6 • 5. How does the author use language: dialect, variant spellings, archaic words, formal or informal words, etc. to shape tone and the meaning of a piece? CCR6
- 12. More Question 3: What does the text mean? • 6. How does the author use point of view, style, mood, tone, text features, imagery, figures of speech to achieve his/her purpose or intent? CCR6 • 7. Why does the author choose the method of presentation? CCR8 • 8. What are the concepts that make the reasoning possible, what assumptions underlie the concepts, and what implications follow from the use of the concepts? CCR8 • 9. What does the author want the reader to believe? CCR8 • 10. What is the quality of the information collected, and are the sources sufficient, relevant, credible and current? CCR8 • 11. Who or what is not represented? Why? CCR8
- 13. Question 4: What does the text mean to me? Apply-So what? • Text to Self CCR7 • What does the text remind me of in my life? Compare a detail from the text to your life. • What is this similar to/different from my life? • Text to Text CCR9 • How is the text similar to/different from another text? • Text to World CCR7 • How is this text similar to/different from things that happen in real world? • How did that part relate to the world around me?
- 14. Practice the BIG 4 • Read the passage provided and write a question in each of the BIG 4 categories. • Push to write questions that allow for critical thinking and inference supported with the text.
- 15. Close Reading Strategies How to Ask the Big Questions and Get Results • No Opt Out • Right is Right • Wait Time • Everybody Writes • *Strategies taken from Doug Lemov, author of Teach Like a Champion These are only a few techniques found in the book, there are many more.
- 16. No Opt Out • “One consistency among champion teachers is their vigilance in maintaining the expectation that it’s not okay not to try.” • Key Idea- NO OPT OUT- a sequence that begins with a student unable to answer a question should end with the student answering that question as often as possible. • No more, “I don’t know” to avoid answering.
- 17. No Opt Out Formats • 1. You provide the answer; the student repeats it. • 2. Another student (or whole class) provides the answer; the initial student repeats the answer. • 3. You provide a cue; your student uses it to find the answer. • 4. Another student provides a cue; the initial student uses it to find the answer.
- 18. Three types of cues for No Opt Outs • 1. The place where the answer can be found: • “Who can tell James where he could find the answer?” • 2. The step in the process that’s required at the moment. • “Who can tell James the first thing he should do is?” • 3. Another name for the term that’s a problem. • “Who can tell James what denominator means?”
- 19. No Opt Out • “The closer the question you asked to your lesson objective, the worthier of a slower and more cognitively rigorous no opt out it probably is.”
- 20. Right is Right • Many teachers respond to almost-correct answers by “rounding up” the students’ answers. • For example, student answers in a general way, and teacher repeats back the answer filled in with the details needed to make the answer complete. • Key Idea- Right is Right- We need to set high expectations and defend a high standard of correctness in the classroom.
- 21. Right is Right 4 techniques to get complete answers • 1. Hold out for all the way- Express positively what the student has done and set your expectation that the student will now “march the last few yards” • Phrases that help: • “I like what you’ve done. Can you get us the rest of the way? • “We’re almost there. Can you find the last piece? • “I like most of that…” • “Can you develop that further?” • Or repeat students’ response back and place emphasis on missing parts. Example, “You just said that a noun is a person, place or thing, but freedom is a noun and it’s not exactly any of those three.”
- 22. Right is Right 4 techniques to get complete answers • 2. Answer the question-”If you’re a Right is Right teacher, though, you know that the right answer to any question other than the one you asked is wrong.” • Only accept answers to the question you are asking. Students learn quickly in school that when you don’t know the right answer to a question you can usually get by if you answer a different one. Set your standard higher than that.
- 23. Right is Right 4 techniques to get complete answers • 3. Right answer, right time- Resist answers that get ahead of your questions. • For example, “When you are teaching students the series of steps needed to solve a problem and a student you call on to provide step 3 gives the whole answer, you have a problem. Accepting the answer deprives the rest of your students of a full understanding. Consider responding with something like, ‘My question wasn’t about the solution to the problem. It was about what we do next. What do we do next?’”
- 24. Right is Right 4 techniques to get complete answers • 4. Use technical vocabulary-Always require students to develop effective answers using precise, technical vocabulary, not just vocabulary they are already comfortable with. • Getting students to use precise vocabulary builds that comfort level with more difficult terms they will need when they compete in
- 25. Wait Time • Delay a few strategic seconds after you finish asking a question and before you ask a student to begin answering it. • By doing this, the length and correctness of student responses are likely to increase, poor answers decrease, students volunteering increases as well as the use of evidence. • Ways to incorporate wait time: • “I’m waiting for more hands.” • “I’d like to see at least 15 hands before we hear an answer.” • “I’m looking for someone who’s pointing to the place in the article where you can find the answer.”
- 26. Everybody Writes • Set your students up for rigorous engagement by giving them the opportunity to reflect first in writing before discussing. • It allows for more effective responses. • Gives students time to prepare answers for discussion. • Allows every student the chance to be part of the conversation even if not called upon. • Processing thoughts in writing refines them, a process that challenges students intellectually, engages them, and improves the quality of their ideas and their writing.
- 27. Close Reading Graphic Organizers • KWL • Venn • SQ3R • Clunks (Vocabulary Work)
- 29. Graphic Organizers: KWL Charts • KWL- Great strategy for all subject areas approaching expository text. • Helps students to be active thinkers while they read. • KWL’s help activate prior knowledge and provide opportunities for students to set their own learning objectives. • Is a good formative assessment as it shows what the students know and what they have learned after reading.
- 30. Graphic Organizers: Venn Diagram • The use of two or more overlapping circles that are used to show the similarities and differences of a concept. • Can be applied to almost any subject. • Helps to provide a visual of information in a text. • Helps breakdown lengthy text into digestible chunks. • Prepares students to write a comparison contrast piece.
- 32. Graphic Organizer: SQ3R • S-Survey • Q-Question • R-Read • R-Recite • R-Review
- 33. SQ3R • Step One-Survey • Student takes a glance at headings in chapter/article to see major points. • This step should be brief and should highlight the central ideas to the text.
- 34. SQ3R: Question • Students will turn those headings into questions. • This will arouse student curiosity, increase comprehension and give purpose for reading. • These questions will make important points stand out from the explanatory detail.
- 35. SQ3R: Read • Students read to answer the question. • Students read actively by conducting an active search for the answer to their question.
- 36. SQ3R: Recite • After reading the first section, the student looks away from the text and tries to recite the answer to their question. • The student uses own words, but must also cite an example from the text. • IF the student cannot answer the question after looking away, the section must be read again.
- 37. SQ3R: Review • Students look at steps 2,3,4 in each heading section. • When student has completed all sections, review notes to get a birds-eye view of the points and their relationships. • Students recite major sub points under each heading.
- 38. Clunks • Use this strategy for difficult terms or concepts within the passage. • Students have to use a fix-up strategy to help them understand the difficult term or concept in the passage.
- 39. Guided Highlighted Reading • Instead of having students answer questions, have them highlight the answers to questions with a highlighter. • Ask the BIG FOUR questions and have them answer with four different color highlighters. • See example.
- 40. Select a Text • Look at text complexity • Look at state recommended text • Choose a text that will support learning of content area • Appendix B of ELA Common Core Standards • http://www.corestandards.org/assets/Append ix_B.pdf