Close reading is so painful!

If this is how you feel about close reading, then this blog post is for you. I love to teach close reading, and I’ve been doing it long enough now that I’ve got a system in place that works very well for my students. I hope this post gives you some good information to take back to your classroom. I’ll also share a close reading freebie at the end!

Here’s  the basic procedure that I use for every close reading lesson:

Introduce and Predict

Introduce the title of the text. I always ask my students to predict what the text will be about and what the purpose of the text might be (is it a nonfiction piece to inform, or a fictional piece to entertain?) Always do lots of turn-and-talk when teaching a close reading lesson. The more opportunities your students have to discuss the text, the better.

Read it Through

This should be a cold read. You’re not stopping to ask questions at this stage. You just want your students to listen and follow along with you. After you’ve read it through, feel free to have students echo read it or choral read it with you to build fluency.

Reread and Clarify

This is where you discuss the text for deeper meaning and have the students make notes on their text. We circle words we aren’t sure about and find context clues to show us their meaning. Here, we are really focusing on the structure of the text. One of my biggest struggles when I first started close reading was having enough texts for all of my students to have their own copy. More on that in a bit.

Text Dependent Questions

This is where you ask questions that can only be answered by the text. Students must find the evidence within the text to support their answers. This is where a great deal of deep discussion happens. Always have your students do lots of turn-and-talk to discuss!

Reread and Summarize

After all this discussion, have your students turn-and-talk to summarize the text or to tell something they learned from it. I often have my students write to respond to the reading.

Close Reading-The Big Challenge

The biggest challenge can often be the text itself. It’s not easy to find quality reading that is simple enough for emergent readers to follow but ALSO rich enough to extend and discuss. That’s why I created a close reading curriculum which includes texts, lesson plans, and extension activities. This set has truly made close reading easier than ever. Here are just a few reasons why I love it.

1. Every student gets their own copy of the text. You can print each student a black and white copy (great for teaching in whole group), or you can print out 6 or so colored copies and laminate them (great for small group). My students love to use dry erase markers on their texts. Instant fun.
2. The lesson plan is done for you. Need I say more? Time is valuable!
3. A Variety of options for extension! Whether you are using the text feature of a diagram to fill in a labeling sheet, finding key details in the text to fill out a can-have-are organizer, or simply writing to summarize, you will find the option that is right for you.
4. Built in assessment. Each lesson comes with a quick question sheet that includes a multiple choice question and a fill-in-the-blank question.

My students love doing close reading in whole group. I project the text up on the SMART board and I give each student their own copy of the text, a crayon, and a clipboard. We can use the magic pen on the SMART board to underline evidence, circle words, and make other markings. Then, all of the students make the markings on their own copy. Putting it into the students’ hands is really invaluable when teaching these strategies. Plus, I love that I can send the text home with them, allowing them to share it with their families.

I want you to be able to try these lessons for yourself, which is why I’m offering this close reading lesson for free. Click HERE to access your free lesson. I hope you have a great time teaching it!

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So, on to our day. The training was called Harnessing the Power of Guided Reading. She knew that most of us had her book and were very familiar with it, so it wasn’t a “Guided Reading 101” session–which I was very happy about. Her presentation focused on the pre-A lesson to the transitional guided reading lessons…which works for me, since I teach K and this blog is for primary teachers! While I obviously can’t recount every detail of the day-long session, here are some of her key points on various topics:

Assessment
We hear it time and time again, because it’s the truth–assessment is SO important. Jan called herself a “running record junkie!” Taking consistent running records on students as they read is vital in order to meet their needs. As Jan said– “it isn’t enough just to say ‘oh, he needs to work on fluency.’ WHY isn’t he fluent?” I’ll admit, I only began taking regular running records on my students 3ish years ago. My consistency with doing one at each lesson is getting better every year, but I’m still not quite there yet. I used to think that taking running records was something you only did a few times a year with the formal benchmark kit (DRA, Fountas & Pinnell, Rigby, etc…) Now I take informal running records on my students often, just on 1-2 pages of the book…my goal is to do one on a student each week. It has made a HUGE difference in how I group my students and how I have planned for their instruction. While I’m definitely not a “running record junkie” yet, I hope to get there!

On her website, Jan provides a WEALTH of information that helps you track student data. Click the resources tab and scroll on down to find everything you could need!

Book Choice
I find this to be the hardest part of guided reading! What Jan reiterated again and again, is that we don’t want to get too caught up on the student’s level. Meaning, we need to think of the student’s level as a range–how often do you have a students who reads only on a level D all the time? Even within levels, there is a range. In addition, it is impossible to have and manage groups where everyone in the group is at the same level. Grouping students who are close to the same level and who are in need of the same STRATEGY work will give you the most bang for your buck. We also spent some time analyzing texts and deciding what teaching points the text would be good for. If a text has lots words for students to decode, we wouldn’t choose that book for a group that is firm with decoding but needs fluency work–even if the reading level matches where they are.

I won’t lie–I can get hung up on the level when it comes to my students’ reading. Hearing Jan talk about this (which reiterates what Debbie Miller said when I heard her speak), is that students are so much more than a level.

Another interesting tidbit–Jan also said that she normally goes a level below when reading nonfiction, since it is  harder!

Differentiation and Scaffolding
Jan went through various scenarios and gave examples of prompts that she would give throughout the lesson. ESOL or low vocabulary students received a high level of scaffolding and vocabulary in the introduction. She gradually released support for students who were more language proficient. It seems like common sense, but she does it so masterfully and it was great to watch! She has a WONDERFUL list of prompts and scaffolds in her book for different circumstances.

A note on vocabulary–don’t ask “what do you think this word means?” when introducing new vocabulary at the start of a book. Just tell them! Because if they get it wrong and you tell them the correct answer, research says they will remember the first answer–the wrong one. Good to know! During reading, she often asked a student “what can you do to help yourself?” when they came to a word and they didn’t know the meaning. She doesn’t use the term “context clues” because students don’t get it–just look for clues.


The Plan
You can download Jan’s lesson plan format on her website for each stage of guided reading, but you really need to read her book in order to understand the research and the background behind each part. The lesson for pre-A is really not guided reading, but small group work–even Jan has found that trying to do traditional guided reading with a pre-A group is a waste of time…so her format which has students building visual memory with their names and known letters, working with books, building phonemic awareness and sharing the pen packs in a lot of powerful teaching into a 20 minute group. And her format is awesome–it’s all filled out and you just fill in the blanks and check where needed! That way, you can focus on thinking about the text rather than typing out your lesson plan.

Management
Jan has a “six weeks to independence” section of her book which details some popular stations and how to set them up, so that students are engaged in literacy while you’re doing your guided reading. She really advocates making your life easier and having students do authentic reading and writing– no worksheets! She even plugged The Daily Five because of how explicit it is and it fosters independence!

Fluency
Jan reiterated what all teachers already know–timing students for words-per-minute is not the best idea, and it can be harmful in the early grades. Why? Because comprehension often takes rereading–rereading for self-corrections and to make meaning of the text. We WANT our students to go back and reread when they need to, and reducing students’ fluency to how many words they read in one minute discourages that. YES–fluency is important for comprehension! But we need to think of fluency in terms of intonation, smoothness, etc… and not simply how fast a student reads the words, which is unfortunately the emphasis of many reading tests. She reiterated the work of Richard Allington time and time again regarding this.

Guided Writing/Word Study

Each guided reading lesson incorporates guided writing and word study. Jan requires students to write a dictated sentence about what they read, which increases comprehension and also ensures that students are writing using pertinent sight words and phonics rules. For example… if your students read a book about clothes and the sight word was “like,” and let’s say in word study they are sorting short o words, the sentence might be “I like to wear my socks. I like the red ones a lot.”

Jan provides various word study options to get the students working with words in different ways. Under the resources section on Jan’s website, scroll all the way down to “word study procedures” to see what I mean.

So those were my biggest take-aways from the day. Jan is coming to do professional development in my district in November, so hopefully I have some new insights to share then!

I know that was a lot of information…what are your thoughts? Anything you’d like me to clarify or are unsure about?

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Part One-Sight word review

We begin the lesson by doing a quick review of three previously taught sight words. Each time the students write a word correctly, I mark it down on a recording sheet. After the student has written the word independently several times, I am confident that it is a known word. You get good at figuring out who knows the word and who is averting their eyes to try to look at someone else’s board.

Part Two- Book introduction and reading

Next, I introduce the story and any new vocabulary the students will need to know. We may quickly preview the story and make predictions, but we don’t spend a ton of time before we get down to the nitty gritty business of reading. This is where it looks like your usual guided reading lesson. The students quietly read the story while I monitor and support if needed. I usually take a running record on a student at this time.

One last thing… I have created some resources for getting started with guided reading in your classroom. I call them Guided Reading Essentials, and they can be found at my Teachers Pay Teachers store if you are interested! The guided writing notebooks are a FREEBIE! Thanks for taking the time to read my blog.

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It kind of looked like this:
“I’m done with the book, Mrs. Brosig!”
“OK…um…just read it again! for the 99th time…”

Or:
“Let’s talk about this eight-sentence book for ‘comprehension’ purposes for a while…like a LONG while!”

Or:
“Hey! I found these worksheets on Reading A-Z so they must be great!” (not knocking Reading A-Z…I totally love that resource).

You see, what was missing from my guided reading lessons before was consistency… We might do a sort or some word work one day, others we’d just fill in a graphic organizer related to the story (at level A, not the best use of our time!), but the kids never really knew what to expect. Honestly, I disliked guided reading very much.

Enter Jan Richardson. The book that finally made it all click. I’ve been using The Next Steps in Guided Reading for three years now and I haven’t strayed, because I find that it works for me better than any other system. I can honestly say that guided reading now runs like a well-oiled machine, and it is one of my favorite components of the day! So I thought I would post what guided reading lessons look like in my classroom, based on her plan. Today, I will be sharing a Pre-A lesson. Pre-A students are those who know fewer than 40 letters (counting both capital and lowercase). They need experience with print concepts suck as tracking print and identifying a letter vs. a word.

Full disclosure: The students who modeled this lesson for me are above a pre-a level. They were kind enough to roll with me before reading their own books for the day.

Part One: Working with Letters and Names (3-4 minutes)

• When pre-a students come to my table, the very first thing they do is get their ABC charts and a baggie that holds all of the letter they know. They match the letters to the chart until time runs out (it goes quick!)

• They may also sort the letters by color, match capital and lowercase letters, name a word that begins with letters in their baggies, or find a target letter on their chart (i.e. “find the letter that you hear at the beginning of car.” At the very beginning of the year, we also do name puzzles until the students can write and identify the letters in their names.

• We also spend a minute working on letter formation. The sheet protectors are great for that. They just write their letters down in the empty space on the chart.

• At the pre-A level, we work on the phonological awareness skills of syllables, rhymes, and beginning sounds. We usually do a quick picture sort as a group.

• The focus is here is oral language, print concepts, and book handling skills. We CHORAL read a simple level A book together. As we read, the students are encouraged to describe what is happening in the pictures. After reading, I ask the students to look for one word, the first word in a sentence, the last word in a sentence, the first letter of a word, a space, etc.

• We share the pen, writing a sentence that follows the pattern of the story. I have the students write the dominant consonant sounds that they can hear. We then cut up the sentence and put it back together. One student  gets to take the cut-up sentence home.

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