The shift in standards in the field of education leads to the creation of new buzzwords.Close reading, for example, is now a buzzword, due to the Common Core state standards. Close reading means so much more than rereading a text - it is the careful selection, creation, and organization of a text for a teacher to pass on to their students. This course addresses many of the misconceptions around close reading, including the idea that close reading should be done daily, that it is just rereading a text multiple times, and that classrooms with multiple reading abilities cannot read the same text as a whole class.
As Donalyn Miller states in the forward of the bookFalling in Love with Close Reading, “We can never lose sight of our true purpose: teaching our students to love reading so much that it becomes real to them- forever” (Miller, 2013). While close reading is an important skill for teachers to use in our classroom, we must not become so invested in the buzzword that we forget about WHY we are teaching a text!
Through this course, we will look at different ways to incorporate close reading in our classrooms- texts, genres, and media. We will also study different suggestions for differentiation, review examples of close readings (television shows, song lyrics, excerpts from novels, essays, etc.), and the different lenses a reader may use to close read a text.
After studying the bookFalling in Love with Close Reading by Christopher Lehman and Kate Roberts, participants will have the opportunity to create a standards-driven close reading lesson of their own to incorporate into their classroom. The main purpose and hope for participants is they realize that close reading is so much more than a buzzword. It is the reason why many of us are educators- the love of reading and analysis of texts!
