Close Reading- Resources

Today's post is brought to you by Heather Zimmerman.

This school year, most of the middle schools in my district are working on reading anchor standard one, which looks at reading closely.  I have spent a lot of time researching and learning this year.  I thought I would share some of the resources I found.  I hope you find these useful.

• Website (blog)- We started off the year during a professional development session looking at this great, easy to read blog.  It starts to look at close reading using a lot of examples.  It was a great way for all content areas to start exploring a bit more.  We used the idea of the bounce pass as topics for future sessions.
• http://www.teachingthecore.com/non-freaked-out-common-core-close-reading/
• Graphic Organizer I used- https://docs.google.com/a/oshkosh.k12.wi.us/document/d/1QSb_UleSxIbxY6jqgEw9CRO385wxBjRVDWrYDreomYo/edit

• Sectionals- During a 90-minute professional development session we had three sectionals that groups of teachers rotated through.  The speakers at each sectional were teachers in the building, which other teachers truly appreciated.  Here were the sectionals:
• Annotating strategy- At one school we talked about coding a text (?, !, etc.) and at another school we talked about BUCKS.  (Sorry I don’t know the original creator to give the appropriate credit to.)

B - Box out facts or key terms

U - Underline the essential question

C - Circle what I don't understand

K - Kick-out what isn't important

S - Start your response

• Videos- Thanks to Fisher and Frey, facilitators pulled out a video they wanted to share with the group and discuss.

http://www.youtube.com/user/FisherandFrey

• Lesson Planning Tool- There is an example of a lesson planning tool in Common Core: Unit by Unit By: Cheryl Becker Dobbertin.

• Setting a Purpose- We looked back at Cris Tovani’s, Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?  Her style of writing is so inviting and her advice is so practical!

• Introducing Vocabulary-  The teachers brainstormed ideas on how they do this.  We created a workable document to add to.

• Close Reading with Literature- A group of literacy teachers and I are doing a book study using Notice and Note by Kylene Beers and Robert Probst.

• Text Dependent Questions- I collected ideas from Notice and Note, Common Core: Unit by Unit, and Fisher and Frey’s website- http://www.fisherandfrey.com/resources/

I will stop here with the overflow of information.  There is so much out there to look at and I hope this list gives you some ideas.  Feel free to comment and share any of your own!