“Every close reading should have a clear purpose for students. Students should know what they’re learning, why they’re learning it, and how they will know that they have learned it.” –Dr. Doug Fisher
On Day 19, Dr. Fisher guides teachers to practice everything they learned over the last 18 sessions by selecting a new piece of complex text to use with students. In this session, you’ll also hear from a teacher as she speaks about the value of literal questions during the close reading process.
Select a piece of complex text that addresses students’ needs. Use student reflections, patterns of student errors, and/or what was modeled in previous sessions to help guide your selection. When you select a piece of text, be sure to:
Craft at least four text-dependent questions at the literal level.
Invite students to engage in a close reading of the text using the literal questions to focus their reading. Respond to students’ needs and change/adjust as you move through the process.
After you select a piece of text and craft literal questions, consider using the Learning Log to reflect on the process.
Use this rubric designed by Dr. Fisher to assess the qualitative factors of text complexity to ensure a reader-text match and to inform areas of text that need instruction.
This log can be used to capture new learnings as you develop close reading techniques.
