If I consistently see a student struggling to create meaningful annotations, I will do a mini-lesson and reteach as needed.ĭO use close reading as a platform for summative assessment. After a discussion, I encourage students to share their reflections on their annotations. This can be a hard balance to strike, which is why modeling is so important.Īs I walk, I star great insights and write questions where students missed an opportunity to extend thought further. If annotation is your tool for assessing close reading, then you have to be reading over students’ annotations to make sure they balance critical thought with comprehension. As they chat, I walk around and read through annotations. While my students are discussing a text, I ask them to have their annotations out. The assessment comes from your observations, student responses to each other, and student responses to your questions.ĭO use close reading as formative assessment. But then let them dig into the text together. Ask students to establish some behavior norms for discussion. Incorporate meaningful academic discussion into your lesson. Close reading should invite a chorus, a cacophony, a conversation! Students have to bring their insights into the text and make room for the text’s impact.įor Peter Elbow, this is the “violence” involved in learning: to make sure that both student and text are “maximally transformed–in a sense, deformed” (331). With this philosophy in mind, I fully believe that close reading is a conversation with a text. My absolute #teachertruth is that reading is a conversation, and writing is a social activity. So you are modeling the reflection process for them, too.ĭO invite dialogue. Build in an opportunity for you to self-assess your work in front of students. And for informational and nonfiction texts, I use this system and these tools.įor my juniors, I model close reading with the first paragraphs of Jonathan Edwards’ “ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Choose a text that presents frequent opportunities for students to wrestle with meaning. For poetry, I use this system and these tools. My favorite ways to support close reading involve using easy-to-remember systems. Let them see and hear your dialogue with a text. Before students can begin the process of close reading with rigor, it’s important to walk students through the process. Therefore, we must return to Danielle’s original question: how do we assess close reading? With that question in mind, here are 5 Dos and 1 Don’t for assessing close reading: How to StartĭO model close reading and share your thinking with students. If we incorporate annotation into our lessons in service of close reading, then we must ask ourselves how the assessment measures students’ ability to close read. This means, as teachers, we must intentionally plan for how annotation will appear in our lessons.Īdditionally, we must also make sure students understand the purpose for annotation in our lessons. reminds us that annotation is only valuable when it has purpose. This post this post may contain affiliate links. But Carol Jago and Penny Kittle remind us that “Annotation is not close reading it is a habit of the mind.” Oftentimes, we facilitate that conversation through annotation. In other words, close reading engages in a meaningful dialogue with the text. Yesterday, Danielle Valentin asked me a great question on Twitter : What’s the best way to assess close reading?Īccording to Beth Burke, NBCT, close reading “is thoughtful, critical analysis of a text that focuses on significant details or patterns in order to develop a deep, precise understanding of the text…”
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