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The Rigor of Independent Close Reading: Teaching Students to Think Deeply—on Their Own Nancy Boyles O ne of the greatest challenges teachers face is getting kids to produce the same quality work on their own as they do with step-by-step guidance. This is especially true for close reading where the expectation is for deep thinking and the texts are complex. Is it realistic to think that students in the elementary grades beyond the primary level can manage the rigor of close reading independently? Yes, if we understand what rigor really is, choose resources that require students to flex their mental muscles sufficiently, and engage in an instructional process that integrates thoughtfully selected best practices. What Is Rigor, Anyway? “Rigor” is one of those terms that we toss about with abandon, like we know exactly what it means. But I suspect that if we asked 10 people for its definition, we’d get 10 quite different answers. There may be some agreement over probable synonyms: “deep thinking,” “high expectations,” “complexity.” But the part that people might miss is rigor is more about the result, the outcome of learning, than the learning process itself. The outcome that educators commonly align with rigor is a student’s capacity to demonstrate insight into a challenging problem or situation: Rigor is the result of work that challenges students’ thinking in new and interesting ways. It occurs when they are encouraged toward a sophisticated understanding of fundamental ideas and are driven by curiosity to discover what they don’t know. (Sztabnik, 2015) It is this “sophisticated understanding of fundamental ideas” that we hope our close reading instruction will accomplish. However, close reading itself is not synonymous with rigor. Close reading is a process . We teach the process of close reading so students will develop the skills and strategies to understand a text deeply. But until students actually produce something for us in response to reading, either orally or in writing, we don’t really know how effective their close reading has been. Reread the first line of the definition above: “Rigor is the result of work that challenges students’ thinking . . . .” Close reading is the process we will teach so students can respond with rigor. Rigorous response is a challenge for close reading in general, and an even greater challenge as we pursue students’ independent close reading. To reach this lofty goal we will need to put into place practices and principles that maximize our students’ potential to think deeply. Let’s begin by considering where we will position close reading within our literacy block. The Rigor of Independent Close Reading: Teaching Students to Think Deeply—on Their Own • Nancy Boyles 115How Can We Go Beyond Whole Class Instruction to Maximize Students’ Potential as Close Readers? I love the idea of introducing the rigor of close reading through whole class shared lessons. The teacher models the thinking processes of serious text analysis and asks the kinds of text-dependent questions that demonstrate to students that they, too, can comprehend text in deep ways. I often use picture books for this purpose. There are so many beautiful and highly complex picture books available for children of all ages that launching close reading in this manner yields great results. Students are engaged. They get to witness close reading in action, and since the teacher is typically reading the book aloud, they are not sidelined by having to read the text themselves. This is especially helpful for students whose decoding skills are not as well developed as their capacity to comprehend. What a positive way to introduce kids to the promise of close reading! Still, we can’t stop here; students must also participate in the discussion. If our goal is independent close reading, there needs to be more monitoring and accountability than whole class instruction allows. Let’s be honest: When you’re teaching any kind of whole class lesson, there are too many of “them” and not enough of “you” to go around. If children participate, you know what they’re thinking and have a general idea of how well they are doing with whatever the lesson is. If they sit silently, even when they appear to be tuned in, you can’t know for sure what they are absorbing. Even when students turn and talk, it’s hard to get around to every partnership. Moreover, at some point students will need to read a text themselves if they are to qualify as independent close readers. We could hand them a book after we’ve modeled the process with those fabulous picture books and ask students to have a go on their own. But that would be a giant leap when what most students need is a sequence of smaller steps with monitoring and support as they wobble forward, tentatively at first, and then with more confidence and skill. Students need to practice the work of close reading while supported by their teacher. Small group instruction is the perfect setting for this to take place. Typically, in small groups, there are a half dozen or so students gathered with you at a table, or maybe you’re sitting shoulder to shoulder on a rug or carpet squares. Everyone has a copy of the text, and they can all read it. There may be some disparity in reading levels, but the range is close enough that a bit more or less teacher scaffolding makes the text accessible to all. Perhaps most significant is the “feel” of the small group: cozy, low risk, a place where thoughts can be shared respectfully and without reprisal. This is a place where everyone sitting around that table can feel extra special. In many ways, small group time is my favorite time of the literacy block because it’s not about teachers and students; it’s about friends coming together to share their thinking and what’s important to them about something they’ve read. Now they need something to read worthy of this small group time. What Kind of Literacy Resources Will Help Students Flex Their Mental Muscles for Independent Close Reading? Consider Text Complexity With a few of their peers sitting with you around a table, let the serious close reading work begin. First, we need the right text. We hear a lot about the need for complex text for close reading. But too often when people refer to “text complexity,” they view it very narrowly, simply as a Lexile score that just relates to sentence length and how often a particular word is likely to appear in print. There’s more to complexity than that! There are the qualitative features to keep in mind, too, and these are especially important when students are reading a text closely themselves. Take into account the background knowledge required by a text. We don’t want students to read 116 Comprehensive Literacy Basics: An Anthology by Capstone Professionaltext totally beyond their realm of experience or capacity to comprehend, but a little stretching is a good thing for close reading. Without their own background to fall back on, students have to rely on the text itself to get meaning—one of the key criteria for close reading. What contributes to complex meaning? Meaning, language, and structure are all different complexities: What contributes to meaning complexity? • lots of inferential thinking • multiple themes or big ideas • intricate plot or sequence of events • complicated relationships between characters or people What contributes to language complexity? • lots of unknown words • figurative phrases • archaic terms • long sentences What contributes to structural complexity? • dialogue and other author’s crafts • flashback • foreshadowing • parallel plots • “busy” page layout with text boxes and other graphics We don’t want all of these complexities to be present in any one text, but we do want a balanced diet of complexities over time: If today’s story is complex in its meaning, maybe tomorrow’s news article will feature language complexities. Exactly what will students read in their small groups to become adept close readers who demonstrate rigor? First, think short! It’s not that we want to eliminate longer texts from the literacy curriculum. But when we want to teach a process (such as close reading) and when the text is challenging, short works better than long. Struggling students will be able to maintain the stamina to persevere through a few paragraphs where a lengthy chapter book, or even a picture book read alone, might be overwhelming. Shorter selections also allow more opportunities for different kinds of texts, both informational and literary. Keep Your Options Open for Informational Text We need to think outside the box when choosing texts for small group close reading. The Common Core reminded us that there should be significantly more informational text in our curriculum than we may have included in the past—a valid expectation. But too often I see a very narrow view of nonfiction. Go-to resources typically have a main idea/detail format with headings and subheadings, bolded words, and accompanying photographs, charts, maps, and the like. These are useful tools, and we need them. But we also need other things. We need primary sources like speeches and songs, diary and journal accounts, personal narratives, and biographies. This can get a little tricky because most speechwriters do not write with an audience of 10 year olds in mind. Still, informational text is a diverse field, and students need to experience its full range. With a little sleuthing, there’s some great stuff out there. Some of it is even free! Many patriotic songs like “America the Beautiful” and “The Star-Spangled Banner” are out of copyright and can be downloaded from online sites. There are also sites with speeches, some of which are manageable for elementary students. I especially like Lou Gehrig’s Farewell Speech, which is heartfelt and a perfect example of a well-constructed argument. Capstone offers an array of informational options, some of which have become personal favorites. I love the Primary Source History series. These small books include titles such as Westward Expansion (Otfinoski 2015), The American Revolution (Powers Webb 2016), and Slavery in the United States (Kimmel 2015) and can be purchased in sets of six for individual titles. The Rigor of Independent Close Reading: Teaching Students to Think Deeply—on Their Own • Nancy Boyles 117They show what it was like to live through these historic periods through the voices of people who were actually there—with quotes, photos, captions, and more. I especially appreciate that they give young readers a context for those complicated quotes to make the language and big ideas more accessible. Here is an example from A Primary Source History of Slavery in the United States (Crotzer Kimmel 2015, 10): Many Northern citizens objected to slavery and wanted it abolished in the new country. New York lawmaker John Jay wrote, “The honour of the States, as well as justice and humanity . . . loudly call upon them to emancipate these unhappy people.” Different color print, fonts, and bolded words contribute to the clarity of the message. Still, my top pick for historical content in a unique format is Capstone’s You Choose Interactive History Adventure series. Reminiscent of the “choose your own adventure” books we may remember from our own youth, these small volumes (also sold as sets) make history come alive. Students can choose among three story paths, making about 40 choices along the way, with three possible endings. For example, in The Underground Railroad: An Interactive History Adventure Revised Edition (Lassieur 2016), students can choose to be a slave, a slave catcher, or an abolitionist. Faced with the decision of whether or not you (a slave) should talk to a stranger along the road, the stakes are high: If the person turns out to be an abolitionist, all is well. But if he’s a slave catcher, you will pay dearly with a severe punishment. I’ve had kids yell at each other for the choice they made: “I told you we shouldn’t have talked to that guy.” Yelling aside, I love to see this kind of passion toward close reading. Why are these books so popular? Typically, when students read historical content they’re reading about choices others have made. The event is over. But here they are the history makers. When you make a decision that matters, you are invested in the outcome. You reason as logically and as strategically as possible because a lot is at stake. If you’re playing the role of a slave, the best use of evidence might even save your life! Reasoning logically and strategically are true indicators of rigor. With regard to informational text, try to find attention-grabbing topics. Some animals are winners every time: pandas, sharks, sea turtles, penguins. Older students love speed and daring feats (roller coasters and extreme sports). Even better: something gross. I recently had the “opportunity” to model a close reading lesson in a sixth grade science class last period on a hot, muggy Friday afternoon in a building with no air conditioning. What worked? Rats! In an especially descriptive sentence in Oh Rats! The Story of Rats and People by Albert Marrin (2006), readers learn that rats in India can fill a freight train 3,000 miles long with the food they eat for the year. That train would stretch from this school in Massachusetts all the way to Los Angeles, California, I told my incredulous group of 12 year olds. I had no trouble keeping their attention from that point forward. Literary Text Is Important, Too While informational text is important, we can’t neglect literature. Nonfiction tends to be complex in the same ways over and over: a lot of facts compacted into a short space with many unfamiliar words, accompanied by a host of text features. Literature presents the increased likelihood of an even broader range of complexities with the inclusion of author’s crafts such as imagery, dialect, and metaphor. Again, focus on short pieces and consider a greater emphasis on the classics. Traditional literature like fables, folktales, fairy tales, myths, and legends are mostly a click away at Project Gutenberg. This mammoth-size digital archive of sources is a treasure trove of texts. Choose something nice and short. Or take an excerpt from a longer work such as The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams (1922). 118 Comprehensive Literacy Basics: An Anthology by Capstone ProfessionalFor a long time he lived in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor, and no one thought very much about him. He was naturally shy, and being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him. The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one else; they were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real. Now there’s an opening paragraph for close readers to sink their teeth into! Beginning with what you’re going to teach with is critical to any close reading lesson. But teaching that text well is nonnegotiable if your goal is rigor. How Do We Design Instruction for Independent Close Reading so Students Can Demonstrate Rigor? A three-step process will go far in achieving this goal. Step 1 asks students to get as much from the text on their own as they reasonably can on a first close read. In Step 2 the teacher is tasked with asking text- dependent questions that probe students’ thinking beyond what they are likely to do by themselves. In Step 3 the teacher identifies a component of the text that is particularly complex or challenging for students and teaches a lesson specific to that skill. Before any “close” reading, you might want students to read through the whole passage one time, just for the gist. This is especially effective with poetry because students will lose the sense of the rhyme and rhythm once they begin pulling the piece apart line by line. This can be an effective approach to other texts as well. I typically ask, “What’s one thing you got from this passage?” Or “What’s your first impression?” Although low-risk and low-stakes, reading for the gist provides a quick estimate of just how difficult the close reading of a passage is likely to be. Step 1: Read the Text Closely Independently, Monitoring Understanding and Reflecting on Meaning Imagine that you have a short informational text, one of the out-of-the-box variety. The Diary of Sallie Hester: A Covered Wagon Girl (Hester 2014) is the diary account of a 14-year-old girl named Sallie Hester who is traveling west with her family by covered wagon in the mid 1800s. Imagine as well that you are teaching this text to a small group of fourth graders reading approximately on grade level. Today’s portion of the text is a single entry from May 21, early in the trip. It contains a mere 350 words. Note that this limited amount of reading would not be appropriate every day of the year as students also need to engage with longer texts. But when the charge is close reading, text that can fit onto a single page is just fine. On the first day with this diary you’ll want to introduce it. But keep your introduction brief— less than five minutes is good. Omit lots of the standard prereading fare such as predictions, personal connections, and even vocabulary because we want readers to learn to get their information from the text, not the teacher. In particular, skip the background building as the author builds all the knowledge needed for comprehension right within the diary. Now how will we proceed? Students need a few manageable strategies to check their comprehension all by themselves. I begin by having them monitor their understanding as they proceed through the text, one short chunk at a time: What words need clarification? What details are worth noticing? They ponder these questions after each chunk, typically a paragraph or two, though even a lone sentence can be a “chunk” if the text is extra challenging. If they’re reading the text alone, these are silent reflections. If they’re reading the text in their small group, they can share their observations orally. Either way, students quickly discern whether they have succeeded in constructing meaning adequately—or if they’ve gotten a little lost along the way. A chunk from the Sallie Hester passage appears on the next page. The Rigor of Independent Close Reading: Teaching Students to Think Deeply—on Their Own • Nancy Boyles 119We are in the Pawnee Nation , a dangerous and hostile tribe. We are obliged to watch them closely and double our guards at night. They never make their appearance during the day, but skulk around at night, steal cattle and do all the mischief they can. Words that might need clarification here are “Pawnee Nation,” “obliged,” and “skulk.” Sallie believed the Pawnees were a dangerous tribe, a detail worth noticing. Then at the end of the passage, students ask themselves four Good Reader questions: What are the key words? Can I summarize what I just read? What are the central ideas? What author’s crafts and text features add to meaning? The words from each chunk needing clarification might, or might not, make the final list of key words for the full passage. The Pawnee Nation detail would likely find its way into the summary and contribute to the central idea. I suggest an annotation sheet containing these four questions to help students clarify their thinking in these areas. I also suggest that these strategies be taught individually before students attempt to use them together. The mini-lessons could be taught early in the school year, or as the need arises when you identify an area where students demonstrate difficulty. You might want to have students practice the strategies below, one at a time, before expecting them to respond to all of the questions together. Teach Students to Identify Key Words Close reading isn’t about the hard words; it’s about the important words. While this may represent a shift from our vocabulary focus in the past, which emphasized unfamiliar words, we now need to recognize that for close reading the word challenge is different: What words will we absolutely need in order to talk and write about this text? Although there may be some challenging language sprinkled throughout this list, a simple way to explain this to students is: What words will you need for your summary? The rigor is in selecting the most essential words. For Sallie’s May 21 diary entry I might choose “May 21,” “Sallie,” “good health,” “wagons,” “death,” “cholera,” “west,” “beautiful,” “Pawnee Nation,” and “hostile.” Notice that this is not a long list. Important words often include characters’ names, dates, and places. There are a few lesser-known or new words here: “cholera,” “Pawnee Nation,” “hostile.” But I’ve also left out some other words from the entry that are hard, and perhaps interesting, but not really needed for meaning: “We are obliged to watch them closely.” “They skulk around at night.” I might return to the text to talk about “oblige” and “skulk” later, but for a first close read, go with the basics. “What words did you find?” I ask the group. The discussion gets pretty animated as students defend their own choices and challenge those of their peers. “Why do you think ‘feather beds’ is important?” one student questioned. “It’s just a little detail.” This dialogue helps children refine their thinking. Sometimes it’s hard for me to believe that we haven’t focused more on key words in the past, even before the Common Core, for without a solid understanding of the important language in a text, how can students express their thinking about its meaning? This is especially crucial for English language learners and other low language students. Insufficient word knowledge can spell disaster for comprehension. Teach Students to Summarize Critical Details Identifying key words also positions students well for fashioning a summary. Students need to recognize how the most important words fit together to create a coherent idea of what the text was about. With less savvy readers I sometimes settle for individual details, and we put them together into a summary collaboratively. But most often I want to confirm that readers recognize how the details fit together on their own. A short paragraph, stanza, or passage can be paraphrased in a sentence or two. Longer chunks need to be abbreviated in a more traditional summary. Either way, the goal is accuracy—without spinning the details into a personal opinion. Just the facts, please. There will be time for interpretation of the facts later. 120 Comprehensive Literacy Basics: An Anthology by Capstone ProfessionalHere’s the kind of summary we would like students to write about Sallie’s May 21 entry: On May 21 Sallie and her family were heading west in a wagon train for a better life. At first her mother was really sick. Now she was back to good health, but some people making the trip died of cholera. Although the Plains were beautiful, Sallie worried they were in the Pawnee Nation because the tribe was hostile. Notice that lots of the key words identified above found their way into this summary, along with other words from the text. The summary is only four sentences and is a reasonable synthesis of basic content, without drilling down to those tiny details that may add intrigue, but aren’t essential to meaning. For example, there’s no mention of the cooking stove that was made of sheet iron or that they buried the dead on the banks of the Blue River. I often ask students to write their quick summary for sharing, though these are not graded. I want students to hear each other’s summaries so we can decide together what works and what doesn’t. Rigor in summarizing is defined by accuracy. Teach Students to Infer the Central Ideas A glance at a good summary should help readers determine the central ideas, those understandings an author wants readers to recognize without stating them outright. “What is the author showing us but not telling us?” I often ask. In the case of Sallie’s diary entry, sometimes I get incomplete or not quite accurate responses: “A trip west in a covered wagon.” (This is barely a phrase and doesn’t respond to the meaning of the trip.) “Sallie and her family had a hard time on their trip west.” (This is only part of the message.) 1. Sallie and her family had some good times and some hard times on their trip west. 2. Sallie was afraid of the Pawnees because they were hostile. 3. The Pawnees weren’t really hostile; they were helpful. Now we’ve got it! A central idea isn’t an individual word or even a quick phrase; it’s a brief statement. In fact, as above, there could be multiple central ideas. Before expecting students to generate their own central idea statements, show them some examples such as those above. Talk about why some statements are effective and others are not. Here the rigor lies in the capacity to synthesize information into a brief, coherent thought that captures general meaning. Teach Students to Recognize Author’s Craft To be truthful, students new to close reading may not recognize much in the way of author’s craft. In past practice, we’ve focused primarily on what an author says in a text, not how the author says it. This is the difference between content and craft. Begin with the most obvious craft elements like page layout and text features. Page 21 of The Diary of Sallie Hester includes a date at the top of the page, an illustration, and a text box with additional information. Why would the author include these features? How might they support readers’ understanding? Students might also notice some archaic words and phrases: “Our family all in good health.” “We are obliged to watch them safely.” How does this phrasing contribute to the message? Beyond page layout and text features, teach students to look for figurative language such as personification, idioms, metaphors, and similes. Teach them to examine the structure of the text: Did the author organize it as a series of events, main ideas with supporting details, a problem and its solution, or something else? How does one paragraph fit into the passage as a whole? What is the genre, and what genre characteristics can be found within the passage? Students will need to focus on author’s craft The Rigor of Independent Close Reading: Teaching Students to Think Deeply—on Their Own • Nancy Boyles 121and text features in the close reading of many texts before they become adept at reading like a writer. Where’s the rigor in author’s craft and text features? Students who are good at identifying these features not only recognize them, but also interpret how a particular craft or feature is significant to a text’s meaning. Remember that author’s craft as well as theme, summarizing, and even key words can also be addressed in Steps 2 and 3 of moving toward independence in close reading: responding to text- dependent questions and skill instruction. Step 2: Respond to Text-dependent Questions that Model Deeper Thinking about a Text It’s tempting to jump right to text-dependent questions as the strategy-of-choice when teaching students to read closely. As teachers, we’re good at asking questions, and we know if we ask the right questions, we can push students thinking beyond superficial meaning to more rigor. But wait (literally)! Resist this temptation because your students will not always have you by their side to coax them toward deeper understanding. At some point they’ll need to struggle through on their own, quite likely this year on an assessment in your class, a state test, and subsequently in assigned readings in a later grade. So honor all of the messiness of Step 1. But don’t expect repeated practice with those four Good Reader questions to transform your students’ thinking completely. For some of the deepest insights, you will need to lead the way—at least initially. Take stock of what your students are able to do well and not so well in their initial day with a text. Follow that lesson with a return to the passage to respond to carefully selected text-dependent questions. This will propel students back into the text and will get them to the rigor you yearn for them to achieve. For the most impact, make sure your questions address a full range of standards and your questions go beyond evidence. A Full Range of Standards that Lead to Greater Rigor For states that continue to subscribe to the Common Core State Standards, and even for those that follow different standards, expectations are similar to what we’ve always required of readers: Find the main idea, understand characters, determine word meanings, sequence the events of a story, and so on. But while we may have given a nod to other standards in the curriculum maps, there honestly wasn’t much persistent attention to elements such as text structure, author’s purpose, critiquing a text, and connections between texts. When we examine the Standards-based assessments, such as those designed by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), it is evident that our reading instruction must embrace all standards more fully. And here’s the double whammy. Not only do we now need to incorporate all standards, we also need to measure them at a deeper level. When teachers and students stress that these new assessments are “hard,” they are referring as much to the rigor required by these assessments as they are to the Standards themselves. We need to better prepare students for this rigor through the text-dependent questions we ask during instruction. Examples of Rigorous Standards-based Questions Remembering that rigor is a result, an outcome of learning, what will be expected of students now as they demonstrate “a sophisticated understanding of fundamental ideas”? Here are a few examples of the rigor on elementary grade assessments for those sometimes underrepresented Standards: • Language and vocabulary: Which words in [stanza 2] reveal the poet’s feelings about ________? 122 Comprehensive Literacy Basics: An Anthology by Capstone ProfessionalIn the past: We would have asked about the meaning of words, but not so much about the tone the author creates with the choice of words. • Text structure: How is the [second paragraph] different from the ones that come [after it] in the passage? In the past: We would have asked how the text was organized (problem/solution, main idea/ details), but not so much about how parts of a text fit together. • Purpose and Point of view: What is the most likely reason the author included [the information in paragraph ________]? In the past: We would have asked about the general purpose of a text—to entertain, inform, or persuade, but probably not about the role of particular details or portions of a text. • Use of nonprint texts: How does the [chart] add to your understanding of ________? In the past: We would have asked students to identify the text feature, but were less inclined to analyze the way that feature informed meaning. • Critiquing text: Which details in [paragraph 3] are most relevant to the author’s claim? In the past: We may have asked students their opinion about a text, but we didn’t regularly pursue a deeper analysis of the sufficiency and relevance of specific information. • Text connections: How do the authors of Source #1 and Source #2 each develop the theme of ________? In the past: We overemphasized text-to-self connections, and spent too little time on connections between texts. Let’s Talk In order for students to become more proficient at responding to questions such as these, we not only need to ask these questions, we need to get students talking about them. Yes, talking. Our ultimate goal may be for students to respond in writing. After all, that’s the way reading performance is measured. But these are places we haven’t ventured before in our literacy instruction, and few kids will feel confident enough to publish their thinking for the world to evaluate without first trying out that thinking in a lower-risk situation. A discussion that you facilitate and guide with a small group of peers to confirm or critique will help students to clarify their thinking as they grapple with big ideas. Digging Deep into the Diary Account of Sallie Hester Remember that students have read a passage of a mere 350 words for this lesson, so we don’t want to overdo it with an extensive list of questions. I suggest two or three that could get students thinking in new directions: 1. How does Sallie help you picture the camp, both during the day and at night? What words help you create a picture in your mind? (Hint: Look for really great descriptive words. Do these words create a happy, positive tone or a sad, negative tone? Or both?) 2. Why is the information in the text box about the Pawnees important to your understanding of this passage? Why do you think the author included the information in this text box? (Hint: Think about what you would have thought about the Pawnees if you had read only Sallie’s account.) Imagine the interaction that these questions might generate. I saw this firsthand with my group of fourth graders. The first question (about visualizing) took metacognitive strategies to a new level. Instead of simply asking what students could picture in their mind, this question asked them to examine how the author crafted the text to support their mental images. The group had fun with this, choosing and explaining the details that were the most vivid to them, and why. But it was the second question about the Pawnees that produced the most conversation and yielded the best insights. On this second instructional day I asked everyone to read the information in the text box as they had The Rigor of Independent Close Reading: Teaching Students to Think Deeply—on Their Own • Nancy Boyles 123Next >