Bringing Back the Old
Close reading is not new. It has existed for many decades as the practice of reading a text for a level of detail not used in everyday reading – Fisher & Fry (2012).
Before close reading, we thought students were good readers if they simply could answer low-level questions. This is no longer good enough. Low-level understanding in reading is not what today’s learners need in order to be successful.
Why Close Reading
Common Core has a central focus on close reading. It is a skill that requires students to determine purpose and find features as well as language used by the author. Its purpose is to get students to think thoughtfully and methodically about details in the text. It focuses students to achieve a deeper understanding of the main ideas and/or supporting details from the text. Students look for evidence within a sentence or section of text to support statements for discussion or in writing test answers.
How to Use Close Reading
Teaching close reading in elementary school is best when reading several genres of short text, both literacy and informational. Short text allows students to read through passages several times over.
Teachers, parents, and students need to focus on asking questions that will lead to a solid understanding of the book or passage they are reading. Examples of questions include:
• What is the author telling us?
• What important words is the author using?
• What does the author want us to understand?
• Who is speaking?
• Is there an important message in the passage?
• What is the theme of the story?
Students are encouraged to look back through the text to deepen their understanding of the author’s purpose.
When we read, it is important to determine purpose and notice features and language used by the author. This enables us to think thoughtfully and methodically about the details of what is being read. Speed-reading is no longer important as it developed from measuring a reader’s successful understanding of text through lengthy packets of comprehension questions.
Reading now requires students to think about their thinking. The reading process changed when the student’s personal connections began to dominate the teaching and testing of comprehension. Students must now thoroughly read and not simply ‘make something up’ for completing answers on a reading test.
