5. Teaching comprehension through close reading
During one of my past graduate courses, I was asked to choose a book from a given list to read and share with my classmates. I chose Falling in Love with Close Reading by Christopher Lehman and Kate Roberts. I have found their close reading approach as a very helpful tool that I can use when designing instructional activities that help my students improve their reading comprehension.
When reading for the foundational skills (text evidence, word choice, and text structure), the close reading approach asks students to complete three steps:
- Lehman and Roberts (2014) share that when students read closely, they are analyzing and interpreting text to gain deeper understanding of what it is that the text is saying.
- We must shift from teaching our students to form an idea that originates from the text, then gathering evidence from that text to support that idea, to gathering evidence from the text, then developing an idea based off of that evidence.
When reading for the foundational skills (text evidence, word choice, and text structure), the close reading approach asks students to complete three steps:
- Step 1: Read through the lenses. When students read through a lens, they are choosing what kind of evidence they will gather as they read. For example, if students were investigating certain characters, they would read the text through the character lens, and note specific details or ideas that they come across that pertain to that character.
- Step 2: Use lenses to find patterns: Once students have gathered their details, they then examine those details to identify patterns that may exist.
- Step 3: Use the patterns to develop a new understanding of the text. The idea behind step three is to use the acquired information from the first two steps to develop a new understanding about the topic.
Audio Recording
The following recording contains a reading that comes from the first chapter in Lehman and Roberts' Falling in Love with Close Reading. The reading fits nicely with this belief, as well as with my second belief, that we must teach our students to love reading. Click the green play button below to listen.
The following recording contains a reading that comes from the first chapter in Lehman and Roberts' Falling in Love with Close Reading. The reading fits nicely with this belief, as well as with my second belief, that we must teach our students to love reading. Click the green play button below to listen.
Lehman, C., & Roberts, K. (2014). Falling in love with close reading. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
More Close Reading Resources:
- Article by Nancy Boyles: Closing in on Close Reading
- Article by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey: Close Reading in Elementary Schools
- Pinterest board dedicated to Close Reading: Pinterest