Closer Reading, Grades 3-6

Better Prep, Smarter Lessons, Deeper Comprehension

Nancy N. Boyles

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781483304403
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Elementary Education

Close... Closer... Closest! Close Reading. Not in a very long while has a term been freighted with so much responsibility to lead every student to a great future of college and career readiness. Finally, here’s a book that tunes out all of the hubbub and gets down to the business of showing how exactly to “get close reading right.”

Chapter by chapter, Nancy Boyles delivers astoundingly practical ideas on how to

• Connect close reading with other instructional practices
• Select rich texts and plan for initial close reading lessons
• Deliver initial and follow-up close reading lessons
• Coordinate comprehension strategies and close reading

Closer Reading Closer Than What?

This book, Closer Reading, Grades 3–6, begs the question, closer than what? The short answer is, closer than past practice. My goal in writing this resource is to show teachers the benefits and how-to of close reading, but to do this in a manner that helps teachers, I also give my take on which past practices to keep, which to amplify, and which to recognize didn’t work well and why. With or without the Common Core State Standards, close reading is a terrific long-lost cousin we are bringing back into our teaching lives. But to make room for it, we have to clearly define the instructional shifts we need to make.

Here is crux of what we need to reexamine about past reading practices: Despite that in recent years teachers and students have been meticulous about pursuing textual evidence to support their claims—answering such questions as, In what ways did the main character show courage? What is the meaning of photosynthesis based on other words in the sentence? What is the main idea of paragraph two?—it hasn’t been enough to produce sufficient numbers of college-ready young adults. That is, while this comprehension of texts has been good enough to satisfy high school graduation requirements for lots of students, it hasn’t impressed placement counselors at community colleges who tell us that nearly 70% of incoming freshmen require multiple semesters of remedial coursework before embarking on credit-bearing college courses. The percentage of unprepared students entering more selective colleges and universities is less grim, though some still require catch-up courses, which is a poor use of students’ financial resources and an unflattering commentary on the academic preparation that brought them this far (Beyond the Rhetoric, n.d.).

I sigh when I hear these disappointing reports of older students’ lackluster academic performance. When I am honest with myself, though, I know I can’t entirely assert that students’ reading performance began to falter only after they left my domain of elementary school, where the cups overflowed with the five pillars, a renaissance in children’s literature, and strategy instruction. I have to accept some blame. We all do.

All of us in elementary education need to reflect on what may have gone awry, even with all our good intentions and hard work. Sure, we can’t cure a recession, poverty, pared-down education budgets, politics, and all the rest. But we have to acknowledge that many of these poorly prepared college students also performed marginally in our eighth-grade language arts class, our fifth-grade classroom, and probably in the primary grades as well.

What went wrong? We teachers followed our district’s literacy curriculum, scrutinized our data, implemented a thoughtful response to intervention plan, adhered—like glue—to the recommendations of the National Reading Panel (incorporating those famous five pillars: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension), attended professional development sessions regularly, and probably juggled a hundred other mandates and edicts. We have worked incredibly hard on behalf of our students because we care about their success and believe passionately that we can make a difference.

Now the nation’s governors and education commissioners through their representative organizations, the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) have asked us to try one more thing in order to make a difference: the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Signed into law by most states in 2010, these new standards have brought with them not only a progression of rigorous English Language Arts and Math standards for Grades K–12, but in their wake, a chorus of voices, each heralding advice about how best to teach to achieve these standards (though the Common Core doesn’t actually prescribe any particular instructional methodology).

Amid the Common Core clamor, one practice that is championed by an array of educators and researchers is close reading. It’s got a heft of research behind it, and it isn’t new but harkens back to prior decades. Notice in the following quote that it is not just the close reading or just the complex text, but the combination of both that leads to college (and career) readiness.

A significant body of research links the close reading of complex text—whether the student is a struggling reader or advanced—to significant gains in reading proficiency and finds close reading to be a key component of college and career readiness. (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers [PARCC], 2012, p. 7)

It would be naïve to think that any single instructional shift could lead to perfect preparation of all our high school graduates, but close reading, I sincerely believe, holds promise—if we get it right. Getting it right will require four central actions:

1. Understanding what close reading is

2. Tweaking past practices for better alignment to close reading

3. Envisioning an instructional model that includes close reading

4. Designing and implementing literacy lessons that embody the very best principles and practices of close reading

Understanding Close Reading

As I said, close reading is not a new term. This notion of close reading has been around for a long time, but it has generally been used to define a method of text analysis more common in high school and college than in elementary grades or middle school. Aligned with the “New Criticism,” it was prevalent in the middle decades of the twentieth century, promoting the notion that “meaning existed on the page” and that reading well revealed “subtlety, unity, and integrity” (Abrams, 1999, pp. 180–182). For fellow French majors out there, the term en français is “explication de texte.” Long ago when I was a French major, we applied it to Molière, Voltaire, Rousseau, and their contemporaries. Now we will get fourth graders to apply this to Cynthia Rylant, Seymour Simon, and Patricia MacLachlan.

We could define close reading in a simple, straightforward way as reading to uncover layers of meaning resulting in deep comprehension. That quite succinctly addresses the intent of close reading, but it misses the fine points describing just how readers arrive at this outcome. In fact, close reading is more of a verb than a noun, as much about the journey as it is about the destination. Here’s how other educators and professional book authors describe close reading:

From Nancy Frey and Doug Fisher (2013) in their book Rigorous Reading: 5 Access Points for Comprehending Complex Texts:

Close reading is in part about discovering—in this case, discovering what the author meant and how to come to terms with the ideas in the text. (p. 56)

From Kylene Beers and Robert Probst (2013) in Notice & Note: Strategies for Close Reading:

Close reading then should not imply that we ignore the reader’s experience and attend closely to the text and nothing else. It should imply that we bring the text and the reader close together. To ignore either element in the transaction, to deny the presence of the reader or neglect the contribution of the text is to make reading impossible. If we understand close reading this way, when the reader is brought into the text we have the opportunity for relevance, engagement, and rigor. (p. 36)

Close reading is more of a verb than a noun, as much about the journey as it is about the destination.

From Laura Robb (2013) in Unlocking Complex Texts: A Systematic Framework for Building Adolescents’ Comprehension:

Close reading is a strategy that can help you figure out a difficult word or understand a challenging piece of text. When you’re reading a text, assume that every word and phrase carries meaning. If you’re unsure of what something means, pause and do a close reading. (p. 262)

From Tim Shanahan (2012) in his blog Shanahan on Literacy:

I think with this brief description of the essentials of close reading (e.g., intense emphasis on text, figuring out the text by thinking about the words and ideas in the text, minimization of external explanations, multiple and dynamic rereading, multiple purposes that focus on what a text says, how it says it, and what it means or what its value is), teachers can start to think clearly about a number of issues in close reading. (para. 6)

Shanahan goes on to elaborate on a number of “issues in close reading”—such as previewing a text and setting a purpose, rereading, and prior knowledge. I, too, will elaborate on these issues in subsequent chapters in this book.

From the PARCC Curriculum Framework:

Close, analytic reading stresses examining meaning thoroughly and methodically, encouraging students to read and reread deliberately. Directing student attention on the text itself empowers students to understand the central ideas and key supporting details. It also enables students to reflect on the meanings of individual words and sentences; the order in which sentences unfold; and the development of ideas over the course of the text, which ultimately leads students to arrive at an understanding of the text as a whole. (PARCC, 2012, p. 7)

Did you read closely enough to extract the key words from this mosaic of descriptions and definitions? Discovering what the author meant; bringing the text and the reader together; figuring out a difficult word or challenging part of a text; minimizing external explanations; reading for multiple purposes; reading thoroughly and methodically; rereading; attending to the text itself, its central ideas, supporting details, the meaning of individual words and sentences, sentence order, and development of ideas. Notice that in all these definitions of close reading it is the author and the text itself that leads the way, but notice, too, Beers and Probst’s (2013) mention of “bringing the text and the reader together.” I love that because it positions the reader as central to the ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• CHAPTER 1. CLOSER READING: CLOSER THAN WHAT?
• CHAPTER 2. CHOOSING A COMPLEX TEXT FOR CLOSE READING
• CHAPTER 3. GETTING IN THE MINDSET OF CLOSE READING
• CHAPTER 4. SUPPORTING READERS BEFORE CLOSE READING
• CHAPTER 5. SUPPORTING READERS DURING CLOSE READING
• CHAPTER 6. SUPPORTING READERS AFTER CLOSE READING
• CHAPTER 7. MOVING STUDENTS TOWARD INDEPENDENCE IN CLOSE READING
• CHAPTER 8. DIGGING DEEPER IN CLOSE READING THROUGH REREADING, SMALL-GROUP INSTRUCTION, AND INDEPENDENT READING
• CHAPTER 9. CLOSE READING FOR THE COMMON CORE—AND MORE
• APPENDICES
• Works Cited
• Index
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