What is closed reading

Note: To ensure you get the best experience and for analyzing overall site usage, our website uses cookies. By continuing to browse our site, you are agreeing to this process. Learn more about the cookies we use. Close reading involves the use of evidence-based comprehension strategies embedded in teacher-guided discussions that are planned around repeated readings of a text in order to increase student comprehension. To understand close reading, educators must also understand what it is not.

Sometimes teachers and students think that close reading means focusing in on or magnifying the importance of increasingly smaller or more literal elements of the text, similar to using a microscope to examine something too small to be seen with the naked eye. Many reading researchers and scholars fear that close reading will be interpreted incorrectly in this way. In actuality, close reading implies an ordered process that proceeds from understanding the smallest or most literal ideas in text i.

Close reading is an uber-strategy that helps students independently comprehend increasingly challenging texts. Students need to develop the habits of mind and the skills necessary to unpack the deep, embedded meanings found in complex, challenging texts in order to become college and career ready. Close reading is intended to develop the reading habits that students need for college and careers, described in Anchor Standard 1 in the Common Core ELA K—12 State Standards, which states that students are expected to:.

The theoretical and research literature on reading comprehension supports the importance of developing these three habits of mind through close reading. Think of close reading as something that you do with a pencil and book in your hand. Mark up the pages; fill the margins. Accurate transcription of quotations is, for some, the first and last rule of close reading. Look at the words. Work from the actual text in front of you, not from a sort of mental paraphrase of what the text says.

As you do so, remember to think carefully about sound, not only when reading poetry but also when analysing prose. Read the passage aloud, paying close attention to the rhythms of sentences. You might be surprised by what you hear: the eye can often glide over aspects of a text that the ear is keen to pick up.

If you need to pause to catch your breath in the middle of a sentence, ask yourself why. How are form and content working together? Close reading has been criticised for being divorced from context and for pulling away from the historical and political engagements of the literary text.

Partly for that reason, it is important to think about the purpose behind your close reading — we are looking for close readings, not closed readings. Essentially, the close reading is the starting point for your essay, letting you find what is interesting, intricate, and unexpected about a literary text. Create a List. List Name Save. Rename this List. Rename this list. List Name Delete from selected List. Save to. Save to:.

Save Create a List. Create a list. Save Back. Common Core: Close Reading. Grades PreK—K , 1—2 , 3—5 , 6—8 , 9— View not found. Download the PDF from here.

Related Subjects. Independent Reading Reading Comprehension Standards. Appears in These Collections. It means rereading and reflecting to come to new conclusions and understandings about the ideas that a text sets out. So, close reading lessons incorporate:. The kind of conversation where you are leaning across the table with your hand on your chin, so focused on what the person across from you is saying that you block out everything else.

The kind of conversation that necessitates a back-and-forth with questions and clarifications before you really understand and can respond.