Close Reading: Elementary Grades K-5

I recently read two blog posts that address close reading of complex text in the elementary grades, including kindergarten and grade 1. The first was a piece by Tim Shanahan titled Complex Text for Beginning Readers… Good Idea or Not. Shanahan makes the case that, even for these early grades, teachers can begin to teach students how to tackle challenging text. Keys to Literacy provides professional development for close reading using our Keys to Close Reading one-day teacher training offering. We are often asked if this PD is appropriate for teachers in early primary grades. Our answer is, “Yes, but only if the teacher uses read aloud to give students access to the text.” Shanahan makes the same point and explains that young children in kindergarten and grade 1 are just learning how to decode words and therefore cannot independently “read” challenging text that will most likely have multi-syllable words. However teachers can still teach how to unpack complex text — it just has to be done through read aloud of the text. Students also need to focus on developing decoding skills, and this is best done using decodable text that might not be as challenging as it relates to vocabulary and comprehension.

The second post is an Edutopia blog post by Emelina Minero titled Driving Deep Reading Comprehension in K-5. Minero shares a five-step strategy to support close reading of challenging texts that is used at the Concourse Village Elementary School (CVES) in the Bronx, NY. This school spends 15-20 minutes each day at K-5 grade levels deconstructing above-grade-level text samples of up to 150 words. The steps are spread out over five days of lessons. The goal after many practices is for students to develop a strategy for reading difficult text. Here is the five-step strategy:

1. Read the text two times to get the gist – What is this text mostly about?
2. Annotate using one of the annotation markings.
3. Ask at least three questions related to Common Core Reading Standards 1-2 (Key Ideas and Details)
4. Ask at least three questions related to Common Core Reading Standards 4-6 (Craft and Structure)
5. Summarize – What did you learn?

There were several suggestions that Minero made that align with the content of our Keys to Close Reading PD. The first has to do with explicitly teaching students how to annotate text. We suggest that students:

• Underline or highlight important
  information – use one color for main ideas and a different color for details
• Circle unfamiliar vocabulary
• Connect ideas with line or arrows
• Bracket the most important
  passages
• Margin notes:
  • Write
    major topics or main ideas
  • Write
    comments and reactions to the text
  • Write
    questions about the text
• Use symbols (text coding):
  • Place
    an asterisk (*) or exclamation
    points (!) next to unusual or
    surprising details
  • Place
    question marks (?) in places where you have a question,  need clarification, or are unsure of what the
    text is saying

We also suggest giving students a handout or posting a classroom poster that offers annotating suggestions, such as the two examples used at CVES (the first is for students in grades 2-5, the second is for grades K-1).

The second suggestion has to do with text-dependent questions. The CVES strategy includes asking questions related to the keys idea and details in the text and the craft and structure of the text. The Keys to Close Reading teaching routine also has a focus on text-dependent questions. Specifically, it recommends that teachers create questions about the whole text and parts of the text that tap into both lower and higher levels of thinking. For example:

• Vocabulary
  Question
  • Lower Level: what word does the author use to describe the color of the bike?
  • Inference:
    what clues does the context provide about the meaning of the word ___.
• Main
  Idea Question
  • Lower Level: What is the main idea of paragraph ___ as stated in the topic
    sentence?
  • Inference:
    Based on details in paragraph ___, infer the implied main idea.
• Author’s
  Point of View Question
  • Lower Level: Who is the author/narrator?
  • Inference:
    What do you think is the author’s main purpose of paragraph ___?

In conclusion, the answer to Shanahan’s question “Complex text for beginning readers… good idea or not?” is YES!