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Defining the Elephant in the Room: What, Exactly, is Close Reading?

After months of research and soul-searching, I’ve come to the realization that I can’t use the terminology of “close reading” in my classes any longer. This has been a long journey for me, as I’ve tried to understand what “close reading” is or should be, and I’ve grown to believe that whatever it is, it is simply not enough. Close reading is only one part of an overall set of critical reading skills that we should be teaching and modeling in our classrooms.

I was first introduced to the buzzword “Close Reading” at an ISD workshop back in 2011, as they were rolling out the Common Core for our county. During the workshop, we ELA teachers watched an address to DC public schools on “Close Reading” by David Coleman (architect of the Common Core).  I was decidedly irritated. Having already rewritten and aligned my curriculum to the Michigan Benchmarks, and later to the High School Content Expectations, I wasn’t really on board with rewriting everything, again, because of decisions made by yet another educational expert who never spent time in the classroom. And now, I was being told by Mr. Coleman that the author’s context and the reader’s response should not be part of the initial discussion of a text. No longer should I use pre-reading strategies, predictions, or mini-lessons; no longer should I encourage the students to make personal connections with the reading; the meaning in the literature would reveal itself, through the magic of “Close Reading” and my ability to structure my instruction with effective questions, thereby leading the students to the correct interpretation. Continue reading “Defining the Elephant in the Room: What, Exactly, is Close Reading?”

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The Value of Talk

The other day, my daughter called and asked me about a recipe. We chatted about its origin, and recalled a funny story that went with it. Our lively  conversation had stemmed from a simple question. Recently, I’ve been paying close attention to questions and their resulting conversations.

“Do you have an idea for your digital story?”

“How was your Fourth of July?”

“What’s the best way to get ketchup and red wine out of a table cloth? ”

“Who can help me with Weebly?”

“Could you look at this piece to tell me if the transitions work, and if the ending is strong enough?”

 

Conversations are pivotal at the CRWP SI.
Participants talk at the CRWP Summer Institute 2015.

Each of these is a question I heard asked by someone during their time at the CRWP Summer Institute.  Each of these led to discussions between two or more people. Sometimes the discussions were short, other times they were long, and a time or two the discussions were later revisited.  Although  it might appear that the conversations were casual, they were still interactions in which two or more people needed to communicate with others and needed to know what others knew in order to help their own learning or thinking. Continue reading “The Value of Talk”

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Time Well Spent

alligator
Clearly, the alligator was what had their attention.

Time.

There’s never enough of it, is there?

Whenever I talk to teachers about my efforts to use an inquiry approach to teaching, they almost always ask, “How do you find the time?”

To be honest, it isn’t easy.

As I mentioned in my earlier posts, before the surprise alligator head hijacked my students’ attention, I was planning to do a unit on reading biographies during my February reading workshop lessons. I was excited about the unit because, in addition to addressing the CCSS for informational reading, I was also going to be able to address three history concepts that were part of the social studies curriculum; it was going to be a two-for-one deal! Plus, President’s Day seemed like a great time to read about Lincoln and Washington. Yes, I was excited about it, but the students weren’t.  Clearly, the alligator was what had their attention, and I knew it was my job to find a way to capitalize on that engagement in order to teach the curriculum – even though it stressed me out at first.

As I reexamined the curriculum, however, I realized that by making sure we spent time learning about and discussing the near extinction of the alligator, I could address two of the history objectives and an additional social studies concept that dealt with man’s effect on the environment.  Our work with biographies, which was a required part of the Social Studies curriculum, was moved to March, shortened a little and centered on Rachel Carson, Jane Goodall and other ecologists.  The students were very interested in these historical figures that cared about nature and the environment as much as they did.   With a little flexibility, I was able to meet the required curriculum objectives, teach the skills, concepts and habits of mind needed for 21st Century success, and keep the students engaged.

Image by Mary Cantwell, http://deepdesignthinking.com/visible-thinking-routine-see-think-wonder-poster/
Image by Mary Cantwell, http://deepdesignthinking.com/ visible-thinking-routine-see-think-wonder-poster

My first grade curriculum, allowed for this kind of flexibility, but not everyone has the kind of options that would allow them to take a one-month detour to follow students’ interests.  However, curriculum-based inquiry units can be just as engaging and powerful as this spontaneous one.  Using a thinking routine, such as See-Think-Wonder created by Ritchhart, Church and Morrison in their book Making Thinking Visible, is one way to launch a curriculum study that centers around students’ interests and questions.  In this routine, the teacher selects an image, object, short video or brief piece of writing that sparks curiosity about the required unit of study.  After examining the image or object closely and sharing their observations, the students begin to ask questions about the topic.  The teacher guides the students so that their questions go beyond the surface level to more meaningful and complex questions.  These questions become the basis for further study.

Collaborating about AlligatorsUsing an inquiry-based approach to teaching does require that you let the students’ questions lead.  As a teacher, you focus on the processes involved in learning and let the content become the outcome of the study rather than the starting point.  It takes time to learn how to do this.  It takes time to plan for it.  It takes time to implement it.  However the learning opportunities that you will be providing  that go beyond the curriculum to develop curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence, responsibility, flexibility and metacognition in your students make it time well spent.


Tricia Clancy
Tricia Clancy is a first grade teacher at Eastlawn Elementary in Midland, Michigan.  She was a part of the CRWP Summer Institute in 2013 and now serves as a teacher consultant.

 

 

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The Writing Is Small, But the Work Is Big

American alligatorIn my last two blog posts (21st Century Literacy and Alligator in the Classroom), I began to tell the story of a shared inquiry project on the American Alligator that my first grade students and I engaged in last winter.  The project began when a parent of one of my students brought a preserved alligator head into the classroom igniting my students’ curiosity about the animal.   In order to answer their many questions, we spent about two weeks viewing videos, reading books, sharing and recording ideas, and comparing information from different sources. I was able to address almost all of the CCSS for informational reading in my lessons, as well as provide opportunities for students to develop some of the habits of mind outlined in the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing:  curiosity, engagement, persistence, and responsibility.

After two weeks of study, when the students had answered all of their questions on alligators, I posed a different kind of question:  “Now what are you going to do with all of your information about alligators?”   At first the students didn’t know how to respond;  They had been learning to satisfy their own curiosity.   However, with a few guiding questions from me, they entered into a discussion about with whom they should share the information, how they would share it and why they should share it.  In the end, they decided to make a movie that they would use to try to teach the other students in the school to care about alligators as much as they did.    I emailed the other teachers in the building asking if any of them could spare 15 minutes to let us come and show our movie and talk to their classes.  Almost every teacher responded yes!  The students were so excited.  The reality of the audience and the belief that they were doing an important service in the world to help protect the alligator gave their work energy and purpose.

In order to make their movie, the students reread the notes they had taken throughout the study and chose the most important ideas to be included.  The students used critical thinking skills as they debated which ideas were most important.  Through this process, they began to understand how authors have to consider audience and purpose when creating text, building their rhetorical knowledge of writing.   Critical thinking skills and rhetorical knowledge are identified in the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing.

alligator drawingNext the first grade students decided they would use the app Draw and Tell on their iPads to create the movie; each child illustrated one idea and recorded his/her voice to explain the illustration.  Some children chose to create their pictures using digital drawing tools in the app and others chose to import photos of their hand-drawn illustrations. Again, they were learning how to make decisions based on the best way to convey the information.  We created the final movie by compiling their individual illustrations into iMovie.  The students made every decision necessary for creating the movie including the order in which to place the photos, the music in the background, the sound effects and title font.  Through this process, I was able to teach many of the Common Core State Standards for informational writing,  production and distribution of writing, and research to build and present knowledge.

As I watched my students at work creating their alligator movie, the following quote from Katie Wood Ray’s book About the Authors kept going through my head:  “The writing is sort of small in comparison, but the work is very big” (10).  The product was not what was important here.  Rather,  it was the amazing amount of learning going on in the process of creating the movie.  The students were truly engaged in the writing process: researching, collaborating, drafting, giving each other feedback, revising, and finally publishing in an electronic format. The ability  to use  the writing process to create text is listed as an important skill in the Framework for Postsecondary Success and is described in the CCSS  Anchor Standards for College and Career Readiness.  In addition, students were developing the habits of mind of curiosity, engagement, creativity, persistence, and responsibility.

After a week of hard work, the movie was complete, and we were ready to share it with the other classes. As we made our way to the fourth grade classroom, I knew the students  were nervous and excited, but they walked down the hall like a group of professionals headed into a business meeting.  They were proud of themselves and their work. When we entered the room, my students quietly took their seats in neat rows on the floor to the left of the big screen.  As we had rehearsed, two students introduced the video and then pushed play.

Everyone in the room paid undivided attention to the 5-minute video playing on the screen. When it ended, the room erupted in enthusiastic applause.  The sound quality was not perfect and some of the images were a little hard to decipher, but the fact that this group of six and seven year olds had done something so authentic had truly impressed their peers.    When the applause died down,  Skyler, as planned,  stood and asked, “Are there any questions?”  For the next 10 minutes, the fourth grade students and the adults in the room asked questions about the content of the video, the process through which the students learned the information and how the video was made.  I was amazed at the knowledge the first graders displayed.  They explained the research and writing process.  They detailed how they had produced the movie using vocabulary that showed their emerging technical knowledge.  They shared the reason why they chose to make a video and the impact they hoped to have on the other students in the school.

What started out as an unexpected classroom interruption turned into a shared inquiry project that provided opportunities for students to begin to develop 21st century literacy skills as outlined in  The Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing  and the CCSS. As I reflect on this month-long experience I’m excited by the power of inquiry to teach 21st century literacy skills.  I wonder where my students will take me this coming year; I can’t wait to follow their lead!



Tricia Clancy
Tricia Clancy is a first grade teacher at Eastlawn Elementary in Midland, Michigan.  She was a part of the CRWP Summer Institute in 2013 and now serves as a teacher consultant.

 

 

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Alligator in the Classroom

This is the second in a series of posts about inquiry-based learning in the first grade classroom.

student copyIn my last blog post  I wrote about the day a student’s dad surprised my first grade class with a preserved alligator head.  The surprise developed into an inquiry project through which my students had the opportunity to develop 21st century literacy skills.  In this post, I continue the story of the inquiry project in order to illustrate the power of inquiry-based learning for fostering the 21st century literacy skills outlined in the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing.

As you may recall, the students had each recorded a question about alligators in their I Wonder Books that they were keeping on the iDiary app on their iPads. Over the next few days, the students continued to show interest in the American Alligator.  Many students independently used Google to search for images of alligators and used the images to brainstorm additional questions. Others chose to read and view the pictures in the books I had placed in the reading corner. It was clear that they wanted answers to their questions. So, I decided that the work we were going to do with biographies would have to wait.   Abe Lincoln and George Washington really weren’t going to be able to hold their attention when they had so many burning questions about alligators.

To begin the shared inquiry project, I gathered resources about the American Alligator: images and articles from Kid Infobits, several videos from YouTube and, of course, traditional books.  I used the structures suggested in Comprehension and Collaboration: Inquiry Circles in Action by Stephanie Harvey and Harvey Daniels to guide the inquiry. Harvey and Daniels recommend a technique called backmapping in which the teacher examines his/her required curriculum and determines how to teach the objectives through the inquiry project that has captured the students’ interest.

TC Clipboards
This photo shows examples of the notes two groups of students took during  a “Stop, Think and React” activity.

I capitalized on the students’ high level of engagement to teach many of the Common Core State Standards for informational reading.  Each day during reading workshop, we would examine a text or video on the American Alligator.  I would design my mini-lesson to address one of the CCSS. For example,  I used a modified version of Stephanie Harvey’s comprehension strategy “Stop, Think and React,”  to teach the students how to identify key details of a text (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.1.2 ).  I would read aloud a short section of the text and then I would stop.  The students would then turn and talk to their learning partner about what we had just read. After discussion, one partner would record the key idea from those pages in words and/or pictures on a post-it note.  The partners would alternate who recorded the ideas for each section.   Often, the students would ask me to re-read a page or a passage as they debated the most important idea to record.  They would get very excited whenever what we read answered one of their questions.

Students locate key facts about alligators.
Students locate key facts about alligators.

Using text features to locate key facts and information in a text (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.1.5 )  was another lesson that was a natural fit for the inquiry project. When we were down to just a few unanswered questions, we would pick one question we wanted to work on for that day.   I would show the students several books and read the titles.  They would select the one they thought was most promising giving reasons to support their decision.  Then I would read the table of contents in that book and they would help select the section to read that they thought would answer the question.  We repeated the process until we found the needed answer.  The students felt like they were on a big treasure hunt, and I was teaching the CCSS in real and meaningful ways.

For two weeks, students listened, viewed, read, took notes, shared ideas, and compared information from different sources. I was able to address almost all of the standards for informational reading in my lessons, as well as providing opportunities for students to develop some of the habits of mind outlined in the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing:  curiosity, engagement, persistence, and responsibility.  Often the activities would go longer than the 20 minutes I set aside for a mini-lesson and,  cognizant of six-year-olds’ short attention spans, I would tell the students we would stop for the day and finish the activity the next day.  On one such occasion, Colton called out,  “We don’t need to stop. I could do this all day.”  Inquiry-based learning was making teaching and learning 21st century literacy skills easier than I ever imagined.

In my next blog post, I will continue the story of the alligator inquiry project to show how the project provided opportunities to teach 21st century writing skills including these skills taken from the Framework for Success for Postsecondary Writing:

  • rhetorical knowledge of writing
  • the writing process
  • creativity
  • critical thinking
  • and the ability to compose in multiple environments

 


Tricia Clancy
Tricia Clancy is a first grade teacher at Eastlawn Elementary in Midland, Michigan.  She was a part of the CRWP Summer Institute in 2013 and now serves as a teacher consultant.

 

 

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