Here we are at installment 2 of our Super Simple Close Reading Planning Template!  If you haven’t had a chance, be sure to go here and grab the Close Read 1 for Elementary and Secondary…I hope you found that it cuts the junk from all of this Common Core stuff.  We have TOO many resources and my goal is to make things simple and do-able!

Now we’re onto our Read 2, where you focus on teaching RI and RL Standards 4-6 – – focusing on how the text works.  The goal of this second step in close reading is to draw kids to the text to look at how the author organized the text to give information, clarity, clues and a “map” for how to get the information within it.

Here is your checklist for teaching Close Read 2 – super simple!

Close Read 2 – Elementary

____Students determine the author’s purpose (entertain, persuade, inform) and refer to the author by name or by title rather than “she” or “he”
____Students spend most of the instructional time in the text and are responsible for understanding the text
____Students are taking notes or annotating text (circling confusing words, underlining key ideas, writing questions in the text margin or on a sticky note)
____Teachers pose text dependent questions that require the reader to address the text explicitly ensuring the reader analyzes how the text works
____RI.4 Focus: Determine the meaning of general academic and domain-specific words and phrases in a text
____RI.5 Focus: Use text features and search tools to locate information
____RI.6 Focus: Distinguish own point of view
____Think time is extended for those higher level questions before students share orally or in written form

Close Read 2 – Secondary

____Questions posed were text-based questions that required the reader to address the craft and structure of the text (RI & RL Standards 4-6)
____Students analyze the author’s word choices on meaning and tone (formal and informal)
____The whole or partial text used for the second read was necessary for deeper understanding of the text.
____RI.4 Focus: Ask and answer questions, referring to figurative, connotative and technical meanings of words and phrases used in the text; analyzing the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone
____RI.5 Focus: Analyze in detail how an author’s ideas or claims are developed and refined by particular sentences, paragraphs or portions of the text
____RI.6 Focus: Determine the author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose
____Students are taking notes or annotating text
____Students discuss the text with others using academic vocabulary and the text as evidence
____Students can explain what author used to advance his point of view or purpose
____Teacher redirects students back to the text when answering questions and discussing the text

Come back here next week and pick up installment 3 of the Close Reading Planning Template!!