IRC Convention – Using Writing and Speaking to Close Read Complex Text with Jennifer Lippert, Stacie Noisey, and Erin Metaxas

At 10:30 we made our way over to the next room at the Hilton to collect information on close reading.  I figure it’s not a reading conference without a session on close reading, right?  And I have a knack for coming to a revelation, even if I have exhausted all ways of looking at things.  This session was no different.

Although Jennifer Lippert, Stacie Noisey, and Erin Metaxas had to move quickly through their information, three main pieces of their presentation jumped out as things I should share with my colleagues.  To avoid rewriting something I have already written, I will simply link my September blog on close reading and move on.  If you're interested in learning more about the nuts and bolts of it, you can read it or one written by Jen White, my co-department chair of the language arts department.  Either blog will give you some basic information on the close reading strategy.

Jennifer Lippert, who did most of the talking during the presentation, drew our attention to a fantastic pyramid, about midway through, of text-dependent questions.  Why everything in education has to be pyramid-shaped, I have no idea, but it did make sense.  At the bottom of the pyramid lies general understanding of the media being "read".  As you move your way up the pyramid, your understanding of the media grows deeper.  By the time you reach the top of the pyramid, you have used what the author (or creator, if using media other than written text) has given the "readers" to analyze and deeply understand it, along with other media that is closely related.

I found this pyramid enlightening for a number of reasons.  First off, although I am not a visual learner in any respect, it gives us a clear picture of the vast use of low-level questions that are asked versus the higher level ones.  It also gives the viewer an idea of where one might look in a piece of media to find the answer to the question.  For example, if a question asks how many brothers the main character has, one may have to look into the text in various places to find the answer or maybe even in just one place (these are like Project CRISS's right there questions).  The answer would be short and quick, right or wrong.  However, if a question asks the reader to draw conclusions based upon a photograph and a primary source document, our kiddos are now being asked to analyze each, draw conclusions, provide evidence to support those conclusions, and justify them, based upon their own background knowledge.  Lines are blurred.  Answers are lengthy, and more than one answer is acceptable.  These questions are few and far between.  Project CRISS might call them author-and-you questions.  I call them tough.

After giving the audience some basic information about close reading, Lippert, Noisey and Metaxas clarified that close reading encompassed more than just reading text from a page.  They clearly explained that close reading has expanded what we could consider "text" to include a variety of medias, including visual art, three-dimensional art, written music, audio recordings, videos and other electronic media, etc.  My memory jogged as I remembered a presentation done by Mal Keenan at the Secondary Reading League's 37th Day of Reading Conference last November where she had said the exact same thing!

Giddy with excitement, I began planning an entire lesson in my head for my choral director husband, who would undoubtedly sit politely and listen to me as I explain what I want him to try.  Whether his intent was to use the idea is another story, but he at least feigns his attention.  It also made sense for me to use music to start with my new non-traditional close reading activity, as I am a former music-ed major .  I envisioned a piece of music being distributed for the first time to a group of eighth grade students.  Although I am confident that my husband does a superb job of prepping his students for a first sing-through, I suggested that he have the students close read the piece first.  Here's how it could work (obviously with some guidance and to start them out):

• After distribution of copies of the piece of music (because the kids are going to mark them up like crazy), ask students to look on the first page and follow along as you "think aloud" the close read.
• Point out things on the first page, such as the title, arranger, writer, tempo, dynamic markings, time signature, key signature, etc.  "Remember" a lesson where you learned what it was and what it means, and jot down some notes right on the copy.  For example, for time signature, you might say something like, "The time signature is 4/4 time.  I remember that we just sang another song in 4/4 and that it means there are four beats to a measure, but I can't remember what the other four means."  Some of your students may be able to help you out.  Get them involved early on.  Don't forget to read the lyrics out loud and make some comments about them as well.  
• After the first page, ask students to partner up and do the same things with the second page.  Monitor them and have them share out as a group after they have worked a little bit together.  Continue on  until you think the groups have a handle on it.  You might just do the rest of the music in partners.
• If you feel like they can handle it independently, give it a shot.  Otherwise, stick with partners, and keep on them about it.  They may start to say that a lot of it is repetitive.  That, in itself, is good close reading.  

Ask them what things mean or why the arranger made that choice.  There are so many GREAT ways to use this strategy!  And it can work with any piece of information-producing media!

Finally, about forty minutes into the session, we got a chance to try out a few of the strategies, and my group was assigned an activity entitled Pass the Annotation.  Here's how it worked:

• Each participant in our group of four was given a piece of text to read (in this case, we had actual text rather than a different piece of media).  We set a timer for three minutes, and we all began reading the text and annotating, keeping a purpose in mind.
• At the end of the three minutes, we passed our papers one person to the left and set the timer for another three minutes where we then read the annotations by the previous reader and then continued to read and annotate.
• We read in this manner until we got our papers back, and by this time we had each read the annotations made by the other members and probably reread the text a few times as well.

I found myself loving this activity because, on the third pass, I was still learning things that I hadn't picked up my first two times.  I had a few "A-ha!" moments even after we got our papers back, and that never would have happened with just one read-through, even with a close read.  What a great activity where all participants are expected to contribute and learn.

At the end of this third session, my brain was full, and my idea-bin was overflowing!  I was pleasantly surprised with the information and ideas I gleaned from this session.  Close reading is such a hot-topic right now, and everybody claims to have the right way to do it.  This group of ladies helped me to think of new ways to adapt the strategy and apply it to a wider range of medias.

Creating Success for the Unsuccessful

Recently I had a request from a science teacher who asked me if I had any tricks up my sleeve to help her students read and comprehend their science text books.  She reported that even after doing read-alouds as a class and two-column notes that many of them space out or don't fully understand what is being read.  Sound familiar?  I know it did to me . . .

Ironically I had just finished (that evening) rereading some notes I had taken weeks ago from another of Cris Tovani's workshops at the Day of Reading Conference, and I immediately went back for another read-through with the request in mind.  This science teacher was most concerned about her inclusion classes, classes where students with IEPs are placed along with a paraprofessional to give additional support and communication to the classroom teacher (often our students who receive tier two and three reading interventions are placed in these classes purposely as well).  Basically you're looking at a class where more than half of the students sitting in there are probably reading slightly to significantly below the reading level necessary to easily manipulate and extract information from the tricky text found in the science text book used in this class regularly. 

My plan is to meet and collaborate with this teacher, but I figured the situation would make a nice blog, as well, so below are some suggestions (some from Tovani's workshop) I'm going to consider as we discuss possible supports that we can implement in her classes.

• Active engagement in the reading is key for kiddos who struggle with difficult text.  I'm a firm believer that students CAN comprehend material that is considered at "frustration" level, but they're unlikely to have the motivation to wrestle with it until they make meaning (in other words - they choose not to), and THIS is why they space out and don't understand what they're reading (or not reading, which is probably more accurate). 
• Require students to be actively metacognitive.  Teaching them to close read may help, because that is what close reading is - recording what you're thinking as you're reading.  And when I say this, I'm not suggesting that we ask our students to jot down things as they come to mind; I'm suggesting that we require students to stop after every sentence or two and record their thoughts (on sticky notes, photocopied pages from the text book, or response journals).  If they're not recording thoughts, they're probably not making meaning because they're not thinking.  This may mean that you, as a teacher, need to narrow down what it is that your students read or you'll never get through what you need to cover. See the next bullet point for more details.
• Taper down what is expected to be gained from reading so that students begin to feel success with smaller chunks of reading.  The idea is not to work slower, but to work smarter.  What can you get away with skipping so that your students can do a close read of two pages rather than five?  What things can you present to them in different ways other than reading?  You don't want to eliminate reading because there are so many benefits that can come out of teaching your kiddos to read text in your content area, but can you find better methods of presenting some of the material?  Does your text book have an adapted version?
• Give students specific purposes for smaller chunks of reading.  For example, "After reading the first two paragraphs on page 95, tell me why you think that solar energy is not used more than it is today."  Allow students to work in pairs or trios and expect all group members to have the same response (require them to formulate answers together).
• Use a timer, chunk their reading into small sections, and stop them after about seven or eight minutes to reset them and then set them off again.  For kids who struggle, unless you see that they are fully engaged and would be better off left alone - continuous resetting will be necessary due to low attention spans.  In instances where the text is SO tough that the simple act of reading the words on the page is horribly frustrating, how can you group kids so that they can work with you or another adult to hear it being read so that the struggle of decoding is eliminated?  What about setting it up so that students can listen to the book online if this is available, but still chunking the text and expecting engagement?
• Make the content matter.  FIND a way to relate the content to their lives and make it matter to them somehow.
• Use strategies such as the Read and Say Something.  This is good for kiddos who are auditory/aural learners.  Partners read (aloud or silently) a small section (a paragraph) and then one restates, summarizes, or comments on what he read to the other one orally.  Then partners switch roles and the second partner reads the next small selection, restates, summarizes, or comments.

Sometimes when teaching content-area material, we know that reading in the content is important and we LOVE us some content-area reading - but we have to put ourselves in the shoes of our kiddos.  The likelihood of a struggling reader loving them some science info straight from the tap is a big fat ZERO.  Ok, maybe not zero, but those students who love reading their science or social studies text books are few and far between - and are even more scarce when all they've done is encounter failure.  It's easier to zone off and choose to fail than try and fail anyway.  Our job is to create situations that create success for these kiddos so that they begin to want to succeed more often.  If you've ever been a teacher, you've seen that moment where a student has a glorified moment of success (with you or with a colleague), and then that student changes her tune for that one teacher - possibly for the remainder of the year.  By using some of the strategies listed above, the likelihood of this happening with one or more of your students grows, because you're purposely setting your kiddos up to have small, successful moments. And that, friends, is what teaching should really be about (yes, I just ended my sentence with a preposition).

October 11 Crumble - Using higher level questioning and the jigsaw to engage learners

I'm currently in the throws of planning an experience in a science classroom that includes close reading followed by several discussion strategies.  As I was flipping through my 4th edition CRISS manual tonight, searching for a crumble-worthy topic, I happened across the Question-Answer-Relationship (QAR).  I was then brought back to a conversation I had with the science teacher this last week who was pleased with a set of questions I had developed as the final discussion activity for our three-day experience, and my crumble was born!

Last year, as I was finishing up my graduate work for University of Nebraska, I was assigned some article readings geared toward problem-based learning.  If you've never run across the term problem-based learning, it's the idea that students learn through solving real-world problems - which, theoretically is a genius idea, but in practice takes either a miracle from God (a problem just happens to present itself that meets every CCSS target needed for the unit) or an ungodly amount of planning and finger-crossing.  Either way, I love the philosophy but am completely and utterly intimidated by it. 

So to bridge the gap between a daunting task of creating a problem-based learning experience and a completely un-engaging lesson, try using Bloom's Taxonomy to create questions that mimic problem-based learning or have students create questions for discussion.  Even better, try doing it using the jigsaw strategy. 

How can this work with a jigsaw?  Well, the first thing you have to do is fully understand what a jigsaw is supposed to look like.  Our plan for the students in science is to give them four parts of an article on climate change and allow them to choose which part they'd prefer to close read (see my previous blog on close reads or another recent blog by my colleague Jen White on the topic as well).  Once they've read and discussed their part of the article with a group of students who have read the same part, we plan to number the students in each group to create new groups where there will be four people in each group (one of each part of the article).  If there are seven students reading each article part, then we number the students off by seven in each group and then put all of they students with the same number together for their jigsaw. 

But instead of giving students direction to simply share information from their part with the rest of the group (as is typical in a jigsaw), our plan is to give the students a set of higher level questions to answer as a group.  Examples of the questions are:

• What one part of human life contributes to climate change more than any other?
• What is the single most piece of evidence that tells us that climate change is happening?
• Can we stop climate change?  Why or why not?
• Should human beings be required to do certain things to stop climate change from happening?

Our goal here with the set of questions is to spur discussion between group members who have all read a different part of an article or piece of text.  It works even better when group members have read entire pieces written from different perspectives.  Do you see how your students will have to use their speaking and listening skills carefully to communicate effectively and how they will learn from each other without just listing off a string of information they read in their part of the selection (that will either be ignored by group members or will superficially be copied down only to be shoved away in a notebook or tossed in the trash later on)? 

If you know anything about Bloom's Taxonomy, you may have identified most of the questions above as evaluation questions (second to highest step on the taxonomy).  We could have taken the discussion questions one step higher, but much of the final step in the taxonomy are more individual and reflective questions, and the goal at this point of the lesson is to get the students to collaborate, not self-reflect.  A few of the questions could actually fall between the final two steps of the Taxonomy - evaluating and creating.

So consider using some of the following question starters when presenting questions for group collaboration.  This table is adapted directly from page 104 of the fourth edition CRISS manual.

Bloom’s Taxonomy	Question starters
Creating	How can you adapt this information to __________? How can you apply _______ to your own life? Reinterpret _________ to fit with a different point of view. The author has changed my understanding of _____ by _____.
Evaluating	What is your opinion of _____? What is the best solution to the problem of _____? Defend your opinion about _______. Evaluate the writing of ________.
Analyzing	Compare ____ to _____.  In what ways are they the same? How are they different? Categorize the important ideas in ______________. What connections can you make to ____________.
Applying	What is one way to illustrate _______? How can you apply _____ to ______? How can you relate ______ to ______?
Understanding	What will happen next in ______? What is the main idea about ______? Predict what ______. How is this similar to or different from ______? Explain what is meant by ______.

The jigsaw strategy sounds complicated, and, in fact, on paper it seems to require a lot of organization, but honestly - our biggest task was choosing the text selections.  Once you wrap your head around the jigsaw organization and create a set of four to five questions, you're really all good!  You shouldn't have to teach anything - just demonstrate the close reading (which was described in the close reading blog) and mix up your kiddos.  They get to do the rest, and all you do is facilitate - which is good teaching, friends.  And because of the discussion and high level of engagement build into the lesson, your students are more likely to get involved and stay involved -- meaning fewer behavior issues and more learning!

September 27 Crumble - Close Reading

The 2013 educational buzz word seems to be close reading, and, unless you're a language arts teacher, you may not completely understand this term.  In fact, some language arts teachers still struggle with it because it's complex and has no concrete rules.  I, myself, become impatient with the practice because I'm a slow reader, naturally, and close reading just makes me read more slowly.

So what is close reading, why should I care, and how could I use it?

Close reading is very much what the term says - it's a close reading of a piece of text for a particular purpose, looking for clues to help you determine what is important for your purpose.  It blends Project CRISS's purpose setting principle and the free-write into one strategy.  When you give your students an activity or a piece of writing, you do it because there is a standard or target that you're trying to hit.  Consider that target when you give your students the assignment, and either communicate it to them or allow them to identify that purpose on their own (checking to be certain they are on the right track). 


To illustrate, take a piece of reading from a book selection on climate change (one of my current collaborative projects).  Your objective may be that students identify causes of climate change.  You communicate that to students and give them the passage.  Modeling the close read is always important, so on the projector or on the board with colored markers (our low-budget interactive white board), show your students what you expect.  A close read is not simply highlighting the causes of climate change, however - but that's a good start.  It requires multiple read-throughs, stopping after EVERY sentence and processing what the sentence is really saying.  The picture to the left shows what this might look like on the white board (thanks to my most amazing colleague for takings pics during one of her lessons!  You can check out her super cute and informative blog right here!).  Notice that she color-coded the annotations here and even made a key. 

This next picture to the right shows how it might look without the color coding.  Notice that she labeled a lot of what she underlined.  The idea here is to have students converse with the author of the selection - to stimulate the internal conversation that is missing so often when students read.  Our kiddos are being asked to perform more and more complex tasks while learning and reading, and many of them become so overwhelmed with the daunting requests that they freeze and forget to be metacognitive while they read.  The close read requires metacognition because students must record their thoughts about the text as they read.  This ultimately gives them a closer understanding of what they are expected to read and allows them to process and ask for help with difficult text.

What can they highlight, underline, or annotate? you ask.  Below is a list of ideas that you can give your students as they practice their annotation and close reading.

• Main characters or the "who" of the selection and evidence of traits of those characters (this can include the narrator).  Traits can be inferred, but the evidence to prove that inference should be marked and noted.
• Setting or the time and place of the selection as it pertains to the purpose of the reading
• Problems/Conflicts and solutions as they pertain to the purpose of the selection
• Unknown vocabulary
• Cause and effect relationships
• Chronological events that pertain to the purpose of the reading and notes as to how they relate to each other
• Questions that you have for the author (that may or may not be addressed later in the selection)
• Answers to previous questions asked
• Reactions to surprising points
• Details that support a conclusion that you have drawn
• Connections to previous learning or real-life situations

The options are really limitless, but remember - your students will get lost in the text if they don't have a focus.  To simply tell them to perform a close read will require them to set their own purpose, but unless you guide them, some of them will, undoubtedly, miss the entire point of the lesson and spend a lot more time processing useless facts than necessary. 

If you're interested in taking a stab at this truly valuable strategy, pick the brain of a language arts teacher this week!  All of our students should have been practicing their close reading the first part of quarter one, and some of them are ready to take their show on the road to other subject areas.