Teaching Teachers About Close Reading

Andrea Reichenberger contributed today's post. More of Andrea's thinking can be found here.

After reading fellow blogger, Carrie Sand’s post  Rethinking Professional Development Options  in January, I thought seriously about the professional development we have been designing for staff members in our district. Recently,we hired a new technology coach, my new office mate, whom I fondly refer to as “The Greg.”  In other words, I have been blessed with another great opportunity to learn. With his help, I decided to take a risk with a new approach.

One of our school wide goals is to work on close reading.  Close reading--not to be confused with reading closely-- is the teaching strategy that involves reading a complex text, annotating, having collaborative conversation, and re-reading based on increasing levels of text dependent questions created by the teachers.

Our first session was in January. We broke the PD down by first explaining why we were taking this approach.  The teachers had some time to dig into our school data as well as the standards and skills required of our students. We learned that we are not asking our students the right questions in our assessments nor are we creating the appropriate level of tasks. On this same day, we also spent some time reviewing the primary features of close reading as well as introducing its 4 phases using Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey’s Book Text Dependent Questions Grades 6-12.  

For February, our focus during our half day session was to dig into literal level (What does the text say?) and structural level (How does the text work?) questions. Our plan was to model activities and instruction we’d like to see implemented within our classrooms.  Teachers were arranged into small groups and then assigned readings from the text to investigate and discuss with their peers. They were then directed to apply what they learned about how to create these levels of questions to a complex text they planned on using as part of their instruction. All of the activities, texts, samples and instructions were placed on Google classroom and allowed the groups to work together at their own pace.   We also introduced Read & Write Google as a method for teachers to annotate a digital text.  

After some reflection on the day, this is what we noticed: