2. Close, analytic reading
Engaging directly with a complex text
Examining meaning thoroughly through reading and
rereading
Understanding the central ideas and key supporting
details
Arriving at an understanding of text as a whole
(PARCC, 2011)
3. First Practice: Select
short, worthy passages
Second Practice: Student
rereading
Third Practice: Limited
Frontloading
Fourth Practice: Text-
Dependent Questions
Fisher & Frey, (2013)
Photo courtesy of FutUndBeidl
4. Three to nine
paragraphs in
length
Deeply understood
by the teacher
Do not need to be
stand-alone texts
Fisher & Frey, (2013)
Photo courtesy of Denise Krebs
5. With a clear purpose
Independently, with
peers and/or with
teacher think alouds
Decreases the need for
frontloading
Improves fluency and
comprehension
Fisher & Frey, (2013)
Photo courtesy of Paul Bailey
6. Limited pre-teaching or
frontloading
Inquiry through
rereading results in the
discovery of the author’s
meaning
Too much limits
students’ opportunities
for inquiry
Fisher & Frey, (2013)
Photo courtesy of Arotem
7. Question types that are asked affect how readers react
Helps build foundational knowledge
Equips students to formulate meaningful connections
and opinions
Scaffolds understanding from explicit to implicit
Requires preparation by the teacher for thorough text
analysis
Fisher & Frey, (2013)
8. Text Dependent Questions
Can only be answered with
evidence from text
Focus on word, sentence
and paragraph
Focus on difficult portions
of text
Must involve analysis,
synthesis, and evaluation
Focus on themes or events
Fisher & Frey, (2013)
Photo courtesy of Tim O’Brien
9. Frey, N., Fisher, D. (2013) Rigorous reading: 5 access points for comprehending complex texts. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. (2011). PARCC model content frameworks: English language arts/literacy grades 3–11.
Retrieved from www.parcconline.org/sites/parcc/files/PARCCMCFELALiteracyAugust2012_FINAL.pdf
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Editor's Notes
The following PowerPoint is about close reading. Close reading helps students stretch and expand their ability to read and comprehend text. The goal is to help you become more familiar with what close reading is, the different practices in close reading and what each practice involves. In addition, we will look closely at text-dependent questions, as they are a critical part to close reading.
The following are key phrases of close reading lifted from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career
There are several practices in close reading. Each practice has a different focus and purpose to help guides students’ understanding of their reading. As you can see, there are four practices and each practice requires a different purpose in reading the text.
The first practice should be a short text and this is for students to read for comprehension and get an idea of what the passage is about. Passages should be ones that the teachers knows very well in order to guide students through. The purpose of close reading is for the student to struggle with the text. It should be worthy, and not give up the answer without substantial work on the students’ part.
The second practice is for students to reread the passage with a specific purpose that is determined by the teacher. This gives students a focal point and understanding about what they are to be tuned into while rereading the passage. This decreases the need for “frontloading” or pre-teaching for students. Rereading will only help with students’ fluency and understanding of the passage.
The third practice, again limits the need for pre-teaching about the information in the passage. The third read is to help students understand the author’s meaning and allows for inquiry and discovery of the text.
The fourth practice should be guided with text dependent questions and this again helps guide the reader and gives them a focus. These are question that require evidence from the text. These types of questions will help the reader dig deeper into the text for a more thorough understanding and allows students to generate meaningful connections and opinions about the text.
Text dependent questions must be answered with evidence from the text to help support the answer. Although questions can be literal, there should be more analytical questions that focus on the difficult portions of the text. Texts should be complex enough to undergo repeated readings for deep analysis.
