Check out how I incorporate Close Reading into the classroom!
Anchor Charts:
Pinterest has led me to some absolutely amazing anchor charts. I can’t wait to get these started next year when introducing close reading.
Describing Our Processes
This is what my kids did to prove they knew the process of close reading. We did this for an open house to show parents how great we became at close reading!
Close Reading in a Nutshell:
Close reading for my first graders was so much fun. Using one text for the entire week really helped them understand the text.
1st Day: Annotating the text and reading as a whole group
2nd Day: Partner reading and vocabulary focus
3rd Day: Text-dependent questions
4th Day: Culminating writing day. I aim to spend between 15-30 minutes on this activity.
Here is a breakdown of how I do this in my classroom… not necessarily how you will do it. You have to find your own groove.
The Details
Monday– We read the text together. I put it on the overhead and touch each word as we read it slowly.
[I know that second grade and above like to give the passage to the students, and let them annotate before we read it together.]
As first graders, I know that reading it together will help them a bit better. After we read it together as a group, we annotate the text. August through January, we do the annotation TOGETHER. We go through each sentence and they tell me what they think is important enough to annotate.
Tuesday– We read the passage together as a group, then I split the students into pairs.
Read 1: Partners share the text- Long hair reads the first sentence. Short hair reads the next sentence, etc.
Read 2: Short hair reads the entire passage; long hair reads the entire passage.
Then we sit back at our tables and we find the vocabulary words we annotated yesterday and work on the vocabulary page together. We brainstorm the word meanings together, then make sentences or pictures together.
Wednesday: Reread together. For the first few months of school, we work on finding the questions in the passage together, restating the question together, and answering the question together. I let go of that control around January when the first graders seem ready to read the text alone for the purpose of finding an answer.
My school was very focused on restating and answering, so this was a great opportunity to teach restating.
Thursday: Kids read the passage independently, then during one of their Daily 5 groups, they work through the culminating writing activity on their own.
Close Reading in the Classroom in Action:
Annotating our text needed the most training. My first graders really wanted to underline and star everything on the paper. It took a bit of training for them to realize what was truly key details and interesting details.
Vocabulary Day!!
Check out a week of close reading easy-prep units.
Nonseasonal Nonfiction Close Reading
Join my email list and snag this full ELA product for free!
Subscribe to get my latest freebies, blog post, educational content, and more right to your email list!
When you join, you'll receive this full product from my TPT store in your email!
