This year I wrote a grant for East Greenwich School system that helped support close reading strategies. The grant was from the Rhode Island Department of Education and it allowed staff from Frenchtown and Meadowbrook to be able to attend the Core Reading Institute to work collaboratively to refine ELA/Literacy instruction aligned to the CCSS.
We reviewed our current CCSS‐ aligned curriculum, identified opportunities for close reading lessons within a unit of study, and selected a lesson within the unit to be enhanced and/or developed. This lesson was revised with the focus of ensuring all learners have access to close reading instruction and feedback was given to enable each team to produce the most robust lessons.
The next part is for us to implement the close reading lesson with students. Lastly, our team member will publish and present this lesson at the Close Reading Cohort. What I am recognizing in doing this teaching is that Close Reading is a phenomenal way to teach comprehension, vocabulary and writing skills. It makes the reader a much more active learner and allows me as the therapist to discover difficulties in comprehension quicker.
What I am recognizing in doing this teaching is that Close Reading is a phenomenal way to teach comprehension, vocabulary and writing skills. It makes the reader a much more active learner and allows me as the therapist to discover difficulties in comprehension quicker. My students with attention difficulties, language difficulties or on the autism spectrum have now a very organized approach to the reading process.
I am practicing this with 2nd and 3rd graders and it has given me a new perspective on some language skill activities. The process has some students saying ” We have already read this!”. I needed to point out that there are times that we need to read something over and over so that we can dig deeper into the text. Some of the students had difficulties in the mechanics of the process so I needed to verify the directions with them. Many of the 2nd graders did not know their left from their right so I needed to include more visuals to assist them. Others were waiting for the reading to be interpreted by others before they started.
I loved it for vocabulary review as I was able to teach what to do when you have a word that you don’t know. We used context clues, parts of words and background knowledge to assist in coming up with the word. In our accountable talk, there were great discussions with some of the vocabulary definitions.
I prepared this PowerPoint to assist the students in understanding what we were doing when we did the Close Read.Close Reading Rakovic
This is from day one from Rhode Island Department of education on Academic Vocabulary. Day 1 Close Reading Institute- Academic Vocabulary
