1. Dr. John D. Barge, State School Superintendent
“Making Education Work for All Georgians”
www.gadoe.org
RESA/DOE
SUMMER INSTITUTE
COMMON CORE GEORGIA PERFORMANCECOMMON CORE GEORGIA PERFORMANCE
STANDARDS: FOCUS ON CLOSE READINGSTANDARDS: FOCUS ON CLOSE READING
Gerald Boyd, Susan Jacobs
Georgia Department of Education
English Language Arts

2. Dr. John D. Barge, State School Superintendent
“Making Education Work for All Georgians”
www.gadoe.org
TODAY’S FOCUS: CLOSE READING
• What do the words “Close
Reading” mean to you?
• On the front of the index card
write a colloquial definition.
• On the other side add 3 things that
you would add for an ACADEMIC
definition of close reading.
05/14/13 2

3. Dr. John D. Barge, State School Superintendent
“Making Education Work for All Georgians”
www.gadoe.org
Key Words?
05/14/13 3
IN GROUPS OF 3-5, REACH A
CONSENSUS OF WHAT YOU
ALL BELIEVE ACADEMIC
CLOSE READING TO BE IN A
FEW BULLET POINTS
HOW DOES IT DIFFER
MARKEDLY FROM WHAT
WOULD BE MEANT IS A LAY
PERSON SAID, “READ THIS
CLOSELY”?

4. Dr. John D. Barge, State School Superintendent
“Making Education Work for All Georgians”
www.gadoe.org
Don’t You Ever Interrupt Me While
I’m Readin’ a Book!
05/14/13 4

5. Dr. John D. Barge, State School Superintendent
“Making Education Work for All Georgians”
www.gadoe.org
Varying definitions…
• Education Week (June 2012) says:
“In contrast to common practice, in which teachers explain
reading passages and supply background information
before students read, "close reading" confines initial
study to the text itself. Students make sense of it by
probing its words and structure for information and
evidence. Through questions and class exercises,
teachers guide students back through the reading in a
hunt for... “
THIS PASSAGE SEEMS TO CONFUSE CLOSE READING WITH
PRE-READING
05/14/13 5

6. Dr. John D. Barge, State School Superintendent
“Making Education Work for All Georgians”
www.gadoe.org
Other training materials…
Achieve the Core says:
Close reading requires that, rather than asking students
questions about their prior knowledge or experience,
the standards expect students to wrestle with text
dependent questions: questions that can only be
answered by referring explicitly back to the text in front
of them. In a shift away from today’s emphasis on
narrative writing in response to decontextualized
prompts, students are expected to speak and write to
sources.
THIS RESOURCE TIES CLOSE READING TO INTEGREATED
ASSESSMENT 05/14/13 6

7. Dr. John D. Barge, State School Superintendent
“Making Education Work for All Georgians”
www.gadoe.org
David Coleman on Pre-Reading
• How much information do we want to give
students about a text?
• Ideal ratio
• Kinds of information
• When pre-reading doesn’t help
05/14/13 7

8. Dr. John D. Barge, State School Superintendent
“Making Education Work for All Georgians”
www.gadoe.org
Where are We Going?
What is
student
achievement?
Student
Behaviors?
Teacher
Behaviors?
05/14/13

9. Dr. John D. Barge, State School Superintendent
“Making Education Work for All Georgians”
www.gadoe.org
Example of Strategy Study:
Reciprocal Teaching
• Predicting
• Questioning
• Clarifying
• Visualizing
• Summarizing
05/14/13

10. Dr. John D. Barge, State School Superintendent
“Making Education Work for All Georgians”
www.gadoe.org
Predicting
• Preview headings,
illustrations, and text
features, such as maps,
captions, and tables.
• Preview text structure:
compare and contrast,
sequence, main-
idea/details, cause and
effect.
• Use frame
• I think I will learn…
because…
• Based on …I predict I
will learn…
05/14/13

11. Dr. John D. Barge, State School Superintendent
“Making Education Work for All Georgians”
www.gadoe.org
Clarifying
• Words you don’t know
• Sentences that are
confusing
• Ideas that are difficult • Use context clues
• Reread
• Look it up
05/14/13

12. Dr. John D. Barge, State School Superintendent
“Making Education Work for All Georgians”
www.gadoe.org
Visualizing
• Make it picture in your
mind of what you read.
• As I read this passage, I
see…in my mind.
05/14/13

13. Dr. John D. Barge, State School Superintendent
“Making Education Work for All Georgians”
www.gadoe.org
Questioning
• Students ask higher-
order questions
• Require text-based
answers • Why does the author
say…?
• How do …and …
compare?
05/14/13

14. Dr. John D. Barge, State School Superintendent
“Making Education Work for All Georgians”
www.gadoe.org
Summarizing
• Identify the most
important points.
• What were the key
ideas?
• The passage about…
begins with…develops
the idea that… and ends
with…
05/14/13

15. Dr. John D. Barge, State School Superintendent
“Making Education Work for All Georgians”
www.gadoe.org
Steps for a Jig-Saw
• 1. Establish a home group.
• 2. Count off within home group (1-6).
• 3. Read the Faulkner piece individually.
• 4. Find “expert group” and complete close
reading strategy together.
• 5. Discuss and note what you like or do not like
about your strategy.
• Each group choose someone to speak briefly
about the strategy and your conclusions about
the piece. 05/14/13

16. Dr. John D. Barge, State School Superintendent
“Making Education Work for All Georgians”
www.gadoe.org
William Faulkner “The Bear” (1942)
He was ten. But it had already begun, long before that day when at last he wrote his age in two figures
and he saw for the first time the camp where his father and Major de Spain and old General Compson and
the others spent two weeks each November and two weeks again each June. He had already inherited
then, without ever having seen it, the tremendous bear with one trap-ruined foot which, in an area
almost a hundred miles deep, had earned itself a name, a definite designation like a living man.
He had listened to it for years: the long legend of corncribs rifled, of shotes and grown pigs and even
calves carried bodily into the woods and devoured, of traps and deadfalls overthrown and dogs mangled
and slain, and shotgun and even rifle charges delivered at point-blank range and with no more effect than
so many peas blown through a tube by a boy—a corridor of wreckage and destruction beginning back
before he was born, through which sped, not fast but rather with the ruthless and irresistible deliberation
of a locomotive, the shaggy tremendous shape.
It ran in his knowledge before he ever saw it. It looked and towered in his dreams before he even saw the
unaxed woods where it left its crooked print, shaggy, huge, red-eyed, not malevolent but just big—too big
for the dogs which tried to bay it, for the horses which tried to ride it down, for the men and the bullets
they fired into it, too big for the very country which was its constricting scope. He seemed to see it entire
with a child’s complete divination before he ever laid eyes on either—the doomed wilderness whose
edges were being constantly and punily gnawed at by men with axes and plows who feared it because it
was wilderness, men myriad and nameless even to one another in the land where the old bear had
earned a name, through which ran not even a mortal animal but an anachronism,1
indomitable2
and
invincible, out of an old dead time, a phantom, epitome and apotheosis3
of the old wild life at which the
puny humans swarmed and hacked in a fury of abhorrence and fear, like pygmies about the ankles of a
drowsing elephant: the old bear solitary, indomitable and alone, widowered, childless, and absolved of
mortality—old Priam4
reft of his old wife and having outlived all his sons.
05/14/13 16

17. Dr. John D. Barge, State School Superintendent
“Making Education Work for All Georgians”
www.gadoe.org
Accessing Unit Planning Resources
• GeorgiaStandards.Org
– Model Unit Frameworks
– Blank Planning Template
– Curriculum Maps
• ELA Editable Unit Drop Box (sjacobs@doe.k12.ga.us)
• ELA Reporter Newsletter
• ListServ: join-ela-(gradeband)@list.doe.k12.ga.us
05/14/13

18. Dr. John D. Barge, State School Superintendent
“Making Education Work for All Georgians”
www.gadoe.org
How Can We Help?
Gerald Boyd Susan Jacobs
gboyd@doe.k12.ga.us sjacobs@doe.k12.ga.us
404-617-7185
Kim Jeffcoat Daniel Rock
kjeffcoat@doe.k12.ga.us drock@doe.k12.ga.us
404-463-1933 770-617-9270
DOE ELA HOMEPAGE:
http://public.doe.k12.ga.us/ci_services.aspx?PageReq=CIServEnglish
05/14/13