Water mint.
Examples of
Close Reading Questions
As a
principal, I want my teachers to teach student how to read a text closely.
After going
through your Powerpoint, reading the questions you suggest and the responses,
I think
professional development in developing questions would be required
to ensure
they were actually asking the right kind of questions.
One of the biggest implementation
problems with Common Core that I see
is that teachers
(and curriculum designers)
don’t understand
close reading well enough to ask appropriate questions.
The point of the
questions is to guide students’ to think about the text in effective ways.
To help this principal (and others) to
provide the professional development noted above,
I have provided
what I hope will be a useful example. But let’s start off with a bit of
explanation.
First, the questions should be about
important issues raised by the text.
Some people are
taking close reading to mean “precise” reading or “thorough” reading.
If you are
asking about a story, you should ask about details that would be important
in a summary of
the story (e.g., character motivation, key plot details, theme).
“Close” is not a
synonym for “trivial.”
Second, the questions should be text
dependent. That just means that it shouldn’t be possible to answer the question
without reading the text. The focus of close reading should be
on what the
author presents, and not on anything else. That’s the reason why it’s a good
idea
for students to
explain or support their answers with text evidence (proof—from the text).
Third, the questions should help the
readers to accomplish three interpretive goals. Specifically, they should help
the reader to think about what the text said (key ideas and details),
how the
text worked (craft and structure), and what it means (integration of knowledge
and meaning).
Unlike in other questioning schemes, these questions do not try to get kids
to exercise
particular thinking skills (e.g., inference, higher order reasoning,
comparison);
they focus on
interpreting the text rather than on exercising particular cognitive muscles.
I have attached an old basal reader
story (from the 1955-1965 period),
and below I have
listed questions that I might ask a group of second- or third-graders
about this
story. I have separated my questions out into three sets—
one set for each
major interpretive goal,
but they don’t
have to be asked in that way; they can be interspersed with each other.
I do think that it is a good idea to
ask your questions in an order that helps students
to follow
through the text in an “orderly manner,” particularly with regard to a first
read
or the key ideas
and details questions. It is not enough that kids get practice reading texts,
but they should
come away knowing more about their world. If the questions/discussion/task
takes you
through the content in a well-organized way, students will be more likely
to come away
with content knowledge. Thus, you could have the students read this story
three times, and
each time use a different set of questions; or you could simply intersperse
the second two
sets of questions into the first wherever you think they fit best. In each list
here,
I have gone through the story in the same order that the author presented
the pertinent information.
Of the three sets of questions, the
“craft and structure” questions are the most characteristic of close reading
(the other interpretive goals are important too, but they are not unique
to close
reading). That means that most of us need more practice with “craft and structure”—something
largely or entirely neglected in the video that I recently critiqued in this
space.
You may notice that I did not go
through and try to have a balance of “right there”
and “think and
search questions” or that I didn’t fool with Bloom’s taxonomy.
The reason is
quite simple: my focus is on—and should be on—the text during close reading.
If a text is
very explicit, then I’ll ask a lot more comprehension or “right there”
questions.
If the text is
more oblique, then we’ll end up with more inferencing practice.
The point isn’t
the inferencing practice, however, it is to get students to think closely
about the
meaning of the particular text we are reading now (that's one of the reasons
close reading questions are hard--because they follow each text, not some
questioning scheme).
Questions
about key ideas and details—What did the text say?
What was special
about
Tom?
What did Tom do
when the men were loading the
train?
Why did he
pretend to
sleep?
What did Tom do
that got his picture in the
newspaper?
How did his life
change after he got in the
newspaper?
What happened
when the chipmunk showed
up?
Why did Tom
follow the
chipmunk?
When he was in
the railroad car what was Tom’s problem?
When Tom got out
of the car where was
he?
Who found
Tom?
How did the
engineer know that Tom wanted to go with him?
Why did the
engineer take
him?
When the engineer
and Tom left what was their problem?
When Tom yowled,
what did the engineer think he wanted?
What changed the
engineer’s
mind?
What did the
fireman think Tom
meant?
So what did the
engineer
do?
According to the
engineer, why was it so important Tom yowled?
How did Tom know
the bridge was
out?
What happened
after Tom saved the train?
Questions
about craft and structure—How did the text work?
What does the
author mean when he writes that Tom
“had never seen
a kitchen nor climbed a back yard fence”?
What is a
“conveyor belt”?
What’s
“freight”?
On page 1, the
story says that Tom was a "hero." What does that mean? (What made him
a hero?)
On page 2, the author
puts some words in quotation marks (“Oh, boy!,” “Fish at last!” “thank you”).
What is he trying to show by doing that? Can Tom talk?
What kind of
story is this (fantasy or realistic fiction)?
On page 4, it
again calls Tom a “hero.” How is the meaning of “hero” different here than on
page 1?
Why does the
author tell us about the chipmunk again at the end?
Questions
about integration of knowledge and meaning—What did the text mean?
The author used
the word “hero” in two different ways. Which meaning is the right one?
What’s the
difference between being a hero and being famous?
Is it better to
be a hero or to be famous?
What was the
point of the story? What did the author want you to learn from Tom?
Railroad Cat Story
Shanahan on Literacy http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/
You TCR can specialist and language dictionaries
that are spontaneously
accessed.
I can Turbo Charge Read a novel 6-7 times faster and remember what
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I can TCR an instructional/academic book around 20 times faster and remember what I’ve read.
A
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Turbo Charged Reading YouTube
How to choose a
book. A Turbo Charged Reading
YouTube
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The more that you learn; the
more places you'll go.”
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