Teaching Close Reading To Beginning Readers Is Hard
A lot of the aspects when you are teaching close reading are more applicable to older students in middle school or high-school. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to reading. So when I began to teach close reading to my first graders, I was intimidated! So intimidated, in fact, that I would try to avoid it altogether!
Close Reading Guide For Younger Students
Once I learned how to teach close reading, my own confidence as a teacher grew. I put together this guide for teaching close reading to younger students, and you can download it today to get started!
But, honestly, my intimidation was because I did not know HOW to teach close reading to my beginning readers. I was a confident reading teacher, but having graduated from college in 1998, close reading wasn’t front and center for literacy instruction. My students could decode and read, but I noticed they needed a push to understand the meaning of their text passages.
So I spent a year in my classroom with the goal of truly learning how to teach close reading to my students. I wanted them to learn how to annotate and confidently read a harder passage. I wanted to teach them to reread the same text, getting more meaning each time. And I wanted to teach them to love new vocabulary words and phrases.
Most of all, I wanted them to be excited about learning new things while reading!
It wasn’t easy. That year, I didn’t feel like I was teaching close reading the way it should be taught. But I didn’t give up. I kept practicing and adapting or eliminating the steps that did not apply to a first-grade student. Before you knew it, close reading became the highlight of our week.
Here’s what I learned:
My students learned to talk to each other about their text! Conversation is so important, especially when we have SO much screen time. Before this, I had the wish that my kiddos could communicate with each other about the things they learned or struggled with, but I never taught them HOW.
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Close Reading Series
Have you struggled teaching close reading with your beginning readers? These strategies are not one-size-fits-all, and if you teach lower elementary students, it’s hard to adjust the steps for a close read lesson so your younger kiddos understand the concepts.
In this video, you’ll learn how to use close read symbols effectively. There are three tips to help your students understand what annotation symbols are and how they should be used. These tips will prevent random squiggles and doodles all over your reading passages. (Which is what happened in my classroom before I figured all of this out.)
Do you spend your entire planning time trying to find the right reading passages? Plus, if you’re teaching a close read lesson each week, you’ll need plenty of passages available for your students.
After you watch this video, you’ll know what levels your reading passages should be and how long you’d like them. Once you have your “just right” passages, you’ll be able to continue your lessons.
Teaching close reading to beginning readers takes some adjustment. You’re not able to use the same strategies for that older students use. These strategies are not one-size-fits-all, so knowing how to teach a reading lesson to elementary students is important. You might be tempted to skip teaching it altogether, but you’ll be missing out on the benefits that these reading lessons gives to your young readers.
Teaching close reading to beginning readers is hard. You probably only know strategies that fit with older students. But your kiddos are young readers, and this is not one-size-fits-all. When I first started teaching a close read lesson a million years ago, I did such a poor job that most of the time I just skipped it entirely.
After you watch this video, you’ll learn what NOT to do. This will stop you from having a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad experience. It will also help you realize that you’re not a terrible teacher (teacher guilt is REAL, my friend) and will lead you to see that you are phenomenal at teaching your students to read.
What do you do if you can’t find close reading passages for your beginning readers? Take what you are already teaching and write your own text. Teaching reading is hard enough when you’re trying to adapt the a close read lesson to elementary students. So instead of wasting your time searching for the right texts, write your own.
After you watch this video, you will learn:
– Why you should write your own reading passages.
– How to take what you’re already teaching and write text for that topic.
– Which vocabulary words or phrases should you include in your passages.
– How to write both fiction and nonfiction text without taking twice the time.
– How long should your reading passages be?
– What your published text should look like.
– What an effective writing process looks like.
– How to organize your reading passages when you’re done creating.
This sounds daunting, but it’s so worth it to write your own passages. You can add your student’s names into the text to give them ownership. You can take the topic that you don’t have a lot of time to cover and touch on it during a reading lesson. Because who has time to cover a topic the way you want to anymore!
Vocabulary development is vital for beginning readers. One of the best ways that I found time to teach my students new and unfamiliar vocabulary words and phrases was during a close reading lesson.
Because who has time to do it all? Teach vocabulary and everything else in your lesson plan book? Not only that, we’re learning that vocabulary should not be taught in a vacuum. Instead, best practices say that vocabulary should be taught in context for the most understanding.
This video gives you five great ideas to make vocabulary instruction work for your students. You’ll learn how to lead your students in a discussion about their new vocabulary words that is more than just memorization. The new words will be meaningful to them. Do you know your students who don’t memorize things well? This is going to give them a whole new approach to learning and retaining the meaning of new words.
You’ve taught a good close reading lesson and you’ve read your reading passages… now what? Looking at reading comprehension skills based on your text is going to help your students look deeper into the meaning of the passages, instead of just the surface level.
After you watch this video, you’ll get an idea of how much time to spend reviewing your reading passages and asking leading questions to help your students understand what is going on in their text.
You have taught a close reading lesson. Now what? It’s time to get creative. Take the topic from your reading passages and do an interactive writing activity. Interactive writing differs from a writer’s workshop because your students will be doing the work on your chart with you as their guide.
If your students ever have trouble coming up with something to write about, this is a perfect solution. You’ll be taking a topic and showing your class how to write in different genres and styles. And this video shows you how.
Or, if your students have trouble with a particular writing skill, use interactive writing to help them practice that skill. You’ll be there to assist and help them, but they’ll be doing the writing themselves.
After your reading lesson, take the topic from the passage and find a reading strategy, a spelling skill, or even a math word problem and use that for your interactive writing.
It is the last day of your close reading lesson. Want to have some fun? Here are some great ideas to review your reading passages that are hands-on and memorable. Your students will still be reviewing the topic of your text, but they’ll also enjoy the activities you’re providing.
This is also a good way to use your passages and review a topic that you didn’t get to throughout the week. Maybe you had a three-day weekend, so you only had four days to teach reading. Use the last day to combine the topic of your text with a craft, an experiment, or a class project.
After you watch this video, you’ll see how to use the reading passages to create a really fun review activity. Your kiddos will be learning and reviewing, but having a great time doing it.
Want to know how to build hype for next week’s reading lesson? Watch this video!
What close reading tools do you have already in your classroom? When you’re teaching a close read lesson, it’s hard enough to remember all the steps. And also try to find all the supplies you need in your cabinets. You probably don’t want to spend a lot of money on supplies either. I mean, c’mon, you’re already so generous for your classroom. All of that, and who has the time to search for the right kind of tools each time you begin teaching reading?
After you watch this video, you’ll see which tools you’ll want to use each time you teach a close read lesson. You’ll learn how to keep your supplies organized, and you’ll realize that a lot of these materials are probably already in your classroom.
Do you teach close reading? Part of your reading strategies can be assigning your reading passages to partners in your classroom. Especially with so much digital learning, your kiddos probably need some classroom management with their activities. This will help your students learn to talk to each other and communicate about their reading passages.
After you watch this video, you’ll learn some important classroom management strategies like how to help your students find a partner, how to teach them to speak to each other, and how to help them listen to each other.
Have you ever had your students partner up only to see them off task the whole time? This video helps you see what you can do to keep your students focused on their reading passages.
Or, have you watched partners struggle with what to say about their text? In this video, you’ll see some steps for partner work that helps your students have conversations about what they’re learning.
Teaching close reading is hard, especially if you have beginning readers. It’s important to keep your students on task, but how? When you’re introducing a reading text, how do you keep your students motivated?
After you watch this video, you’ll learn how to build hype for your reading passages. You’ll see how to keep your students motivated throughout their reading lesson. And you’ll learn some classroom management strategies that you can use for any lesson you teach.
My Close Reading Results
After teaching close reading strategies to my first-graders, I noticed that they had more direction for their communication which helped them learn how to speak to each other.
Having conversations with each other in a close read lesson also helped them communicate with each other the rest of their school day! I noticed that students who normally didn’t get along with each other were speaking to each other with more respect. I noticed that students who were shy came out of their shells, and I could apply these conversational techniques to other subjects too!
My students gained more confidence with reading. When you are teaching a close reading lesson, the text passages are more difficult than what they are reading independently. The strategies for close reading helped my students avoid overwhelm with longer, more difficult passages.
More Close Reading Benefits
So when it was time to read for a reading assessment, especially for a cold-read passage they’ve never seen before, I had less tears and frustration in my classroom. My students could apply what they learned in close reading to new text. Before I began teaching close reading, a text passage with multiple paragraphs and difficult words or phrases would be too overwhelming. Afterwards, my students could take their tests like champs!
I noticed my student’s vocabulary and word usage improved! Not only that, they were excited to learn new words because they took ownership of them. I learned that it was more effective to lead them to find the vocabulary definitions and meanings within the text, rather than to tell them the word, explain the definition and expect them to remember it all.
They became masters at finding out what a word meant.
Teaching vocabulary in close reading lessons by using the context clues in the passage helped my students with their independent reading!
So when I was teaching guided reading to a small group of students, they were ready to pause for a tricky word and figure it out with little or no assistance from me.
When you are teaching reading, you will have struggling readers who act out or have off task behavior during your lesson.
I think back to the time when my dad was trying to help me with chemistry in high-school. It was my hardest subject, and I’m still impressed when chemistry comes easy for someone. Poor dad had to sit with me and try to explain some strange formula for some strange isotope (I’m making that terminology up, is that even a chemistry term?) and I literally cried and yelled at him. It wasn’t his fault, I just didn’t understand. So I acted out.
Less Frustration
Every time I saw a student with off-task or undesirable behavior in my classroom, I tried to remember my sophomore year of high school in chemistry class. It helped me be more patient. It also helped me remember that there was more than one way to learn anything, and I needed to learn chemistry a different way. Side note: My parents got me a tutor to avoid chem fights at the dining room table and I pulled off a C in the class!
All of this is to say that my struggling readers had a place in a close reading lesson. They learned to be successful and learned different reading strategies. Once I felt more confident in chemistry, I stopped being so mean to my dad. (Seriously, sorry, dad!) And once my students felt comfortable reading, my classroom behavior improved.
Speaking of classroom behavior, something unexpected happened!
My students also became more responsible!
There are a lot of routines and steps for close reading, and with practice, your students take ownership of their reading. I noticed this in their literacy centers: students who didn’t always stay on task at my classroom library were reading with more stamina for longer periods of time.
They also PUT THE BOOKS AWAY when they were finished.
I can’t even understand the correlation between a close reading lesson and the good habits of cleaning up after themselves at a reading station, but whatever was happening was working! I’ll take it!
This FREE guide will teach you the close reading strategies that will make a close read lesson successful.
As an elementary teacher, it’s hard to adapt close reading successfully for younger readers. I didn’t have a manual when I began, but I wish I had an easier start. So I wanted to give teachers like you a head start when you’re teaching close reading to beginning readers.
With this free guide, you’ll know what to do to keep your kiddos engaged all week.
You will learn what supplies and materials you need for a successful close reading lesson. You’ll learn what to do on each day during your week of close reading. This was another struggle for me.
I read through the text passage with my students, NOW WHAT?
You’ll have vocabulary ideas to boost your students’ mastery of words and phrases, imagine how great it would be to have time for vocabulary instruction! I’ll show you how it works!
Comprehension is hard for younger readers. They learn to decode words and now they have to understand what everything together means too?
With how much we have to teach in a week, the idea of “Fun Fridays” went out the window years ago. At least it did for me. I didn’t have time to do the fun crafts and activities that first-graders love and frankly deserve to do! I always thought this was so sad, and I wanted to bring it back somehow. So I devoted the last day of close reading to a fun extension activity about the topic of our close reading passage. I’ll show you how to find time for a fun activity, where your students are still learning in the FREE guide for close reading!
I also added the best classroom management tips I used during our close reading week, so you can actually teach your students, rather than correcting unwanted behavior or trying to keep your kiddos attention.
And best of all? I’ve added two close reading passages WITH lesson plans to get you started.
When you download the FREE Guide For Teaching Close Reading To Younger Readers, you’ll learn:
- How to teach your students to annotate.
- Which supplies you need and which ones you don’t!
- What you need to know about the best reading passages for close reading.
- What to teach on each day of a close reading week.
- How to improve your student’s vocabulary with close reading.
- Techniques to improve your student’s reading comprehension skills.
- Extension activities that take the topic of your close reading passage further.
- Classroom management during close reading, including partner activities and effective transitions.
You’ll also get two close reading text passages with TWO WEEKS of lesson plans!
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