Category Archives: Common Core

Guided Reading or Close Reading

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I have observed a lot of confusion about close reading and guided reading. I’ve even heard some educators using those terms interchangeably.  Nothing could be further from the truth! These two terms reflect reading practices that both have their place in elementary classrooms, but teachers have to carefully consider the reasons for selecting either.

GR CR graphicGuided reading is a specific teaching technique– a method that a teacher uses to guide students to learn to master specific strategies for unlocking text.  It was perfected by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell in the 1990’s.  Students begin at very basic level texts that are highly supportive for readers—excellent picture clues and mostly decodable text. The teacher selects a “just right” text for a group of 4-6 students. The teacher models and guides students through activating prior knowledge and pre-reading activities, such as a picture walk. Students are guided in applying strategies before, during, and after reading. The text is often chunked into small pieces (a page or two). During and after reading, the teacher asks questions that relate to the story. Often, the teacher takes a running record of a student as he/she reads. Students may reread a text more than once to build fluency and practice decoding skills. Students may do a variety of follow-up activities, such as “copy cat” books, word sorts, or some writing.

What makes close reading different? First of all, it is not a teaching method.  Close reading is a goal for proficient readers. Close reading has been around much longer than Guided Reading—it originates back in the 1920’s, and was really popular in the 40’s and 50’s. Close reading focuses on gleaning meaning from the text itself—what the author is trying to say. To facilitate a close reading, the teacher does just enough pre-reading activities to get students ready to understand the text. Students dive in, reading the text in chunks.  The text isn’t selected based on readability, but rather on the complexity of the ideas to explore.  You don’t read an entire book or article closely—you select smaller portions that you want to dig into more deeply. After reading, students discuss the text, asking and answering text dependent questions that require the reader to revisit the text. Students reread the text several times, digging deeper into the complexity of the message each time.

So…what should you be doing with your students: guided or close reading? The answer is both, or either.  Each time you meet with a small group, you need to make decisions, including how to best approach the text in order to meet the needs of this group of students.  Guide readers who are just learning to read. Facilitate close reading when students need to read to learn and deeply comprehend text.

Download the infographic here.

 

Quality Questioning & Common Core

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Text Dependent Questions are a critical component in the Common Core State Standards. Students must be able to answer Text Dependent Questions—that is, questions which require students to use evidence from the text in order to answer them. They require students to dig deeply into the text to support an answer. In fact, a text dependent question cannot be answered without using the text; background knowledge and prior experiences should not be included or considered. Questions like “You just read about hurricanes. Have you ever experienced really bad weather?” are not dependent on the text—that is, they don’t require any words, phrases or other ideas from the text itself in order to answer them.

Text-dependent questions may be used for instruction or for assessment purposes.  They expect students to understand what the text explicitly states as well as make logical inferences that match that text evidence.  They do not require any information, connection, or ideas that the reader may draw from outside the text.

When crafting questions to meet the Common Core State Standards, we begin with Standard 1 in both Reading Literature (RL) and Reading Informational Text (RI). Standard 1 expects students to ask and answer questions as well as to be able to use text evidence to support their thinking about a text. Text Dependent Questions go beyond Standard 1 and address at least one other Standard. So, no matter what standard a question addresses, the question is also addressing standard 1 as well.  Questions should be text dependent, so all require students to revisit the text to find specific information to prove their answer.

In addition to guiding students to demonstrate understanding of the Common Core State Standards, text dependent questions should also promote higher level thinking. A question may be text dependent but still may not require a lot of inferencing or higher level thinking. A question such as, “What is the setting?” is text dependent because it requires students to go back and find a specific sentence or part of the text to identify the setting.  Perhaps students may have to infer the setting from clues, but this is still a lower level of cognitive demand.Often, text dependent questions are about a specific portion of a text; they require students to linger over a particular paragraph or section to gain meaning. Text Dependent Questions are purposeful; they are carefully crafted to guide students to closely read and deeply understand the text. Text Dependent Questions may have more than one correct answer as long as each answer can be well-supported by evidence in the text.

Questions may be text dependent, but not necessarily high level, rigorous questions.  A great model for selecting text dependent questions that require high level thinking is Bloom’s Taxonomy. Benjamin Bloom developed a Taxonomy of Thinking in 1956 that is still quite relevant today.  Bloom’s Taxonomy is a hierarchy that categorizes levels of thinking. In 2001, Anderson revised Bloom’s Taxonomy to focus on the kinds of thinking needed at each of the levels. Bloom’s Taxonomy begins with simple knowledge level of remembering and increases in difficulty all the way to synthesizing ideas and creating new projects.  Questions can be developed to foster thinking at each of these levels. The goal is to ask questions that are both text dependent and get student to think at higher cognitive levels.

Check out the online resource on Text Dependent Questions & Bloom’s Taxonomy from my April 2015 article in LibrarySparks magazine!

Prepare for PARCC without Test Prep!

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Many of us are counting down to the beginning of our first PARCC Assessment or have already begun.  I have heard of a lot of colleagues scrambling to find PARCC practice or other test preparation materials.  Here is the scoop on test prep: it doesn’t work. With all of the criticisms about the amount of time that schools are spending on standardized testing, it is even sadder that we are piling on top of that with exorbitant time preparing students to take these tests. There may be short-term improvements, but large amounts of time and effort devoted to having students take practice items is a waste of instructional time.

What do we do instead? I propose something novel: teaching students the skills and strategies they will need  to be successful thinkers, readers, writers, and mathematicians. This is the goal of PARCC and other tests–to measure how well students think and can do.  If we create successful thinkers, they will be able to read and write and problem solve whatever PARCC throws at them.

Here are some things you can do with your students to prepare for PARCC without test prep:

  • Read complex text independently
  • Orally paraphrasing texts, questions, or writing prompts
  • Answer text-dependent questions
  • Close reading
  • Quote and paraphrases evidence from text
  • Read multiple texts
  • Write from sources
  • Produce extended writing and on-demand writing (2 pages in a single sitting in grade 5 and 1 page grade 4)
  • Write an essay
  • Edit for conventions: capitalization, punctuation, and spelling
  • Keyboard quickly and accurately
  • Use online tools to Drag & Drop,
  • Read on a Screen/ Electronic Device
  • Use note-taking
  • Scroll multiple windows
  • Navigate multiple screens
  • Use online writing tools (spell check, etc.)
  • Use online math tools (calculator, ruler, etc.)
  • Consume media (viewing video clips, websites, listening to podcasts, etc.)

Download the PARCC Learning Activities  handout here.