How, in the heck, do I start?

1. How, in the heck, do I start? • Common Core Standard 1 • Doug Fisher/Tim Shannahan • Sunday Cummins • Megan Panje District PD • Close Reading is an outcome, not a technique or a strategy I In fact: use it anytime with any text to develop Metacognitive strategies so kids can read like this independently! • AKA Deep Reading, Critical Reading, Analytical Reading

2. Progression of Text-dependent Questions Standards Whole 8 & 9 Acrosstexts 3 & 7 Entire text 6 Segments 4 & 5 Paragraph 2 Sentence Word 1 Part

3. Sunday Cummins: Big Ideas that students need a process to support them, including Anchor Charts, predictable Annotations and basic questions that lead to INDEPENDENT close reading of complex texts. Her giant emphasis is on synthesis of the author’s big ideas. Fisher and Frey’s : model is quite detailed, and gives many examples of text-dependent questions in all 9 CCSS strands. This might be a great resource for you if you like a little more hand holding. Tim Shannahan: recommends a simplified model and has a lot of critical questions on his blog about the assumptions people make about close reading in general You might like this if you enjoy hearing a range of ideas and someone who pushes the envelope Lehmans Falling in Love: Many teachers at HO are studying him! Great opportunity to have a common language with other teachers!

4. A simple way to look at it 1. For a first reading, you want to ask questions that ensure that the students understand and think about the major ideas in the story or article. That means you limit your questions to big ideas or you query information that you think the students might be confused by. 2. On the second reading, you want to ask questions that require students to analyze how the text works: why the author made certain choices and what the implications of those decisions would be in terms of meaning or tone.3. On the third reading, the issue is how does this text connect to your life and your views, critical analysis of quality and value, and how the text connects to other texts. (Shanahan)

5. Things to consider about Text dependent questions • Close reading requires close attention to the ideas expressed and implied by the author and to the author’s craft • “Low-level” questions are little more than memory tasks—they ask readers to remember what the author has said explicitly • “High-level questions” ask for answers that require logic, inference, and/or analysis of the text information • Past research indicates that a mix of low and high question levels leads to better comprehension

6. Which of the following questionsrequire students to read the text closely? • If you were present at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, what would you do? • What are the reasons listed in the preamble for supporting their argument to separate from Great Britain?

7. If you were present at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, what would you do? • What are the reasons listed in the preamble for supporting their argument to separate from Great Britain? (Fisher and Frey)

8. How long did it take to go from a hatched egg to a butterfly? The title of the book is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. How do we know he is hungry? What foods gave the caterpillar a stomachache? Non-Examples and Examples Not Text-Dependent Text-Dependent • Do you like butterflies? Why or why not? • What do you know about healthy and unhealthy foods? • Eric Carle lists foods that give the caterpillar a stomachache. What is one food that gives you a stomachache?

10. FIRST: What does the text say? • Overall view • Sequence of information • Story arc • Main claim and evidence • Gist of passage Follow up with Retelling/Summary

11. Key Details • Search for nuances in meaning • Determine importance of ideas • Find supporting details that support main ideas • Answers who, what, when, where, why, how much, or how many.

13. SECOND: How does the text work? • Questions should help guide students to think about how the text works and what the author was up to (craft and structure) • What did you think about how the author used literary devices? How effective were these? • Awareness of author choices are critical to coming to terms with craft and structure

14. Vocabulary and Text Structure • Bridges literal and inferential meanings • Denotation • Connotation • Shades of meaning • Figurative language • How organization contributes to meaning

15. Inferences Probe each argument in persuasive text, each idea in informational text, each key detail in literary text, and observe how these build to a whole.

17. THIRD What does the text mean? • Questions should help guide students to think about what this text means to them and how it connects to other texts/stories/events/films • Stories relate to other stories and to our lives • Evaluations of quality (placing a text on a continuum based on quality standards) and connecting to other experiences is an essential part of the reading experience

18. Author’s Purpose • Genre: Entertain? Explain? Inform? Persuade? • Point of view: First-person, third-person limited, omniscient, unreliable narrator • Critical Literacy: Whose story is not represented?

19. Evaluation & Synthesis • Do you know other stories like this? How were those stories similar and different? • Which of these stories did you like best? Why? • What did the story mean to you? What does it say about how you should live your life?

21. Students use Evidence Based Terms

23. Sample Text-Dependent Question Stems

24. A Sample Close Reading Template

25. Develop Text-dependent Questions for Your Books • Do the questions require the reader to return to the text? • Do the questions require the reader to use evidence to support his or her ideas or claims? • Do the questions move from text-explicit to text-implicit knowledge? • Are there questions that require the reader to analyze, evaluate, and create?

26. How can I remember all this??? • Everything from BC is on the website • Join the Falling in Love with Close Reading book club! • Come to the next BC in which we will watch some people in action and develop the questions for a passage together!

28. FIRST : What does the text say? • Questions should help guide students to think about the most important elements of the text (the key ideas and details) • Stories are about significant, meaningful conflicts (between man and nature, with others, and with oneself) • Human nature and human motivation are central to the action and the meaning • Questions should also clarify confusions (in this case, confusions about what the text says)

29. The fallacy of having “rules” for Close Reading • Never preteach vocabulary or concepts • Always ask text dependent questions are always RIGHT • Annotations must be made by students • Read each paragraph for 50 minutes or 5 times • Students have to read by themselves the first time • Questions should all be higher order thinking • The ONLY RULE is you know your students and you know the text and what you want students to have experiences with getting a deep understanding of a text so they can eventually read closely on their own. TRUST YOURSELF!

30. That bears repeating: The ONLY RULE is you know your students and you know the text and what you want students to have experiences with getting a deep understanding of a text so eventually they can read a text closely on their own.TRUST YOURSELF!