For this lesson I pulled an article that was related to our current unit of study. I use the website Newsela to pull these as I am able to vary the levels to match the readers. So we read an article about developing cheaper solar cells. The first step that I taught them for this strategy was to read the article silently while asking questions and annotating the text. This is a great way for me to see what they are noticing within the text and the types of questions they were asking. We then moved on to step two and had I them get with a partner and share and discuss what they noticed, and any lingering questions that their partner may be able to answer. Step three in our "Close" process" was to come up to group and read the article aloud to them a second time. While I read I asked them to listen for details that support the main idea/topic. I think this went very well because they had read and discussed it previously and were able to identify these details quite easily. Lastly, for this lesson they went back to their seats and thought about what they read, then wrote about it, this too they shared with a partner.
Today, I will bring the focus to our writing about the article. The underlying of idea of "Close" reading is for them to learn to read like and investigator, and write like a reporter. So, we will go back and reread the article a third time, and look for examples to prove the main idea/topic. They will have to respond to the writing by citing evidence from the text.
I know it may seem like a lot of steps for one piece of text, but it is critical that the students learn how important it is to really examine an informational text to be sure they are understanding all the pieces.
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