Close Reading, Close Listening, Close Talking:
Supporting Deeper Conversations,
Better Comprehension and
Heightened Engagement
With Any Text
TCTELA
Austin, Texas
January 23, 2016
Presented by
Kathy Collins
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Some Questions We’ll Explore
What are our understandings about close reading?
What are our understandings about shared reading?
What are our expectations for high-level conversation in K-2 classrooms?
How can we use the structure of shared reading to support comprehension, conversation, and
community?
How do we know children are learning what we’re teaching?
1.
2.
3.
4.
•
•
•
Some Desired Outcomes
Teachers will learn a variety of ways to use shared reading to support close reading and better
conversations.
Teachers will try close reading.
Teachers will project some possibilities for shared reading lessons in their classrooms.
Select Beliefs About Teaching and Learning At Work This Week
We have ambitious and fair expectations for all of our children.
We are willing and able to differentiate our instruction and our materials to accommodate our children’s
different learning styles and dispositions.
We want to a provide a variety of opportunities, experiences, and materials for all children to fully engage
in their reading, to invent their own ways to apply our instruction, and to find significance in their work.
•
Fauxgenda
Course Topics
Take Aways, Fuel for Thought,
Lingering Questions, What’s Next?
Looking Closely at
Close Reading and Close Talking
Expanding our Understandings
Pushing the Boundaries
of Shared Reading
Creating Learning Opportunities with the
Dynamic Pairing of
Shared Reading and Close Reading
Kathy Collins – [email protected]
2
Looking Closely at Close Reading for K-2 Children
1.
3.
2.
4.
Some Resources for Close Reading
Kate Roberts and Christopher Lehman, Falling In Love With Close Reading
Kylene Beers and Robert Probst, Notice and Note
www.kateandmaggie.com (Kate Roberts & Maggie Beattie Roberts’s blog)
www.tomakeaprairie.com (Vicki Vinton’s blog)
www.burkinsandyaris.com
Characteristics of Close Reading
Kathy Collins – [email protected]
3
What is a possible pathway toward closer reading?
The Text
The
Text
What does the
text actually say?
What does
the reader
think
about it?
How does
the author
say it?
What does the text
actually say?
How does the author
say it?
Kathy Collins – [email protected]
4
What does the reader
think about it?
Talk About Texts and Response to Texts
K-2
Why?
• to provide opportunity for children to share their
thinking about texts or to provide opportunity for
children to know what they SHOULD be thinking
about texts?
How and When?
• Whole group
• Small group
• to provide opportunity for children to expand
expressive/receptive language abilities
• Reading partners
• to provide opportunity for children to rethink,
revise, elaborate, etc.
• Individual conferences
• to provide opportunity for children to become
stronger conversationalists and better listeners
• Read aloud time
• Shared reading time
Juicy Questions to Grow Talk
That Aren’t Text Specific
• What gave you that idea?
Ambitious but Fair Expectations
For Your Students
• Whole Class Conversations?
• What part of (the text) leads you to think/say that?
• Say more about that…
• Individuals?
• What did the (author) do there?
• What do you notice about (the text)?
• As speakers?
• What comes to mind?
•
• As listeners?
•
•
Kathy Collins – [email protected]
5
Shared Reading and Close Reading
Draft
Definition
(as per KC and
this changes as
I grow more
understanding;
There are many
other ways to
define these.
How would you
define these?)
Characteristics
and
Questions
Materials
Work-Play
Resources
Shared Reading
Close Reading
A component in a balanced literacy
framework that supports children’s
growing fluency, comprehension, and word
power, while also helping to build
community and positive reading attitudes
and healthy reading habits. Shared reading
is often considered to be the ‘with’
component in terms of gradual release.
An approach to reading a text in which the
reader slows down in order to more fully
understand what a text is saying, claiming, or
conveying. The reader analyzes word choice,
organization, structure, craft, etc. in order to
more fully understand. After a fuller
understanding of the text, the reader
considers her schema, experiences, opinions,
etc, to grow well-rounded and full-bodied
understanding.
• intended to mimic ‘child-on-my-lap’
interaction with text
• 10-20 minutes
• all eyes on one text large enough for all to
see
• flexibly planned (teacher intention +
student interests)
• repeated readings of a text across days
• choral readings
• results in student ‘ownership’ of text
• opportunities to consider print strategies
and vocabulary acquisition, fluency,
comprehension, habits, behaviors,
responses to reading
• can be done independently, small group,
whole group, with or without teacher
• rereading is necessary and essential
• practice makes nearer to perfect
• transferrable rewards from training
readers’ eyes, minds, and hearts to do this
work
• What does this text say?
• How does the author/illustrator say it?
• What do I notice about word choices,
organization, structure?
• What do I think about this and where in
the text have I gotten my ideas?
• big books
• poetry
• excerpts from texts
• song lyrics
• chart tablet
• white boards/dry erase markers/erasers
• shared reading folders for each child
•
•
•
•
• comprehension – having ideas, developing
thoughts, using strategies, etc.
• fluency – rate, chunking, intonation,
expression, prosody, punctuation, etc.
• word study – word solving, attending to
parts, vocabulary development, etc.
• community/habits/fun – drama, choral
reads, taking parts, variations, extensions
• comprehension – having ideas, developing
thoughts, using strategies, etc.
• fluency – rate, chunking, intonation,
expression, prosody, punctuation, etc.
• word study – word solving, attending to
parts, vocabulary development, etc.
• community/habits/fun –
Brenda Parkes, Read It, Again!
Barbara Fisher, Perspectives on Shared
Reading
• Kate Roberts and Chris Lehman, Falling in
Love With Close Reading
• http://kateandmaggie.com (Kate Roberts
and Maggie Beattie’s blog)
• http://tomakeaprairie.wordpress.com
(Vicki Vinton’s blog)
excerpts from texts
poetry
charts, copies, smart boards
highlighters, sticky notes, etc.
Kathy Collins – [email protected]
6
Shared Reading/Close Reading
Demonstration Observation Guide
Text/Genre:
Teacher Questions and Prompts:
Children’s Responses:
Comprehension Work?
Fluency Work?
Word Work (Print Strategies/Vocabulary Acquisition)?
Reading Habits/Behaviors?
Reading Response Opportunities?
What Could Happen Tomorrow (Flexible Plans)?
Kathy Collins – [email protected]
7
Planning Shared Reading/Close Reading
Text:
Day 1:
Day 2:
Day 3:
Day 4:
Day 5/Extensions
Kathy Collins – [email protected]
8
Excerpt from Flight Behavior, by Barbara Kingsolver
A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture. Or so it seemed for now, to a
woman with flame-colored hair who marched uphill to meet her demise. Innocence was no part of this. She knew
her own recklessness and marveled, really, at how one hard little flint of thrill could outweigh the pillowy,
suffocating aftermath of a long disgrace. The shame and loss would infect her children too, that was the worst of it,
in a town where everyone knew them. Even the teenage cashiers at the grocery would take an edge with her after
this, clicking painted fingernails on the counter while she wrote her check, eyeing the oatmeal and frozen peas of an
unhinged family and exchanging looks with the bag boy: She’s that one. How they admired their own steadfast
lives. Right up to the day when hope in all its versions went out of stock, including the crummy discount brands,
and the heart had just one instruction left: run. Like a hunted animal, or a racehorse, winning or losing felt exactly
alike at this stage, with the same coursing of blood and shortness of breath. She smoked too much, that was another
mortification to throw in with the others. But she had cast her lot. Plenty of people took this way out, looking
future damage in the eye and naming it something else. Now it was her turn. She could claim the tightness in her
chest and call it bliss, rather than the same breathlessness she could be feeling at home right now while toting a
heavy laundry basket, behaving like a sensible mother of two. (page 1)
Applesauce by Ted Kooser
I liked how the starry blue lid
of that saucepan lifted and puffed,
then settled back on a thin
hotpad of steam, and the way
her kitchen filled with the warm,
wet breath of apples, as if all
the apples were talking at once,
as if they'd come cold and sour
from chores in the orchard,
and were trying to shoulder in
close to the fire. She was too busy
to put in her two cents' worth
talking to apples. Squeezing
her dentures with wrinkly lips,
she had to jingle and stack
the bright brass coins of the lids
and thoughtfully count out
the red rubber rings, then hold
each jar, to see if it was clean,
to a window that looked out
through her back yard into Iowa.
And with every third or fourth jar
she wiped steam from her glasses,
using the hem of her apron,
printed with tiny red sailboats
that dipped along with leaf-green
banners snapping, under puffs
of pale applesauce clouds
scented with cinnamon and cloves,
the only boats under sail
for at least two thousand miles.
Delights and Shadows. Copper Canyon Press, 2004
Kathy Collins – [email protected]
9
Rats and Their Ratty Ways (excerpt from Oh, Rats! By C.B. Mordon)
Everything about the rat makes it a champion at survival. Of all the mammals, only humans have
been more successful – at least so far. Just think about what a rat can do. It can:
• squeeze thorugh a pipe the width of a quarter
• scale a brick wall, straight up
• fall off a five-story building and land safely on its feet
• rear up on its hind legs and box with its front paws
• get flushed down a toilet and live
• climb up a drainpipe into a toilet bowl
There are two main types of rats. The Norway rat, or Rattus norvegicus, originated in Siberia, a part
of eastern Russia. Over the centuries it got other names, based on its appearance and lifestyle: brown rat,
gray rat, wharf rat, water rat, sewer rat, alley rat, house rat. Scientists call its smaller cousin Rattus rattus.
Also known as the black rat, ship rat, and roof rat, its homeland is southern China.
No matter what we call the rat, its body is built for survival. A rat can collapse its skeleton, allowing
it to wriggle through a hole as narrow as three-quarters of an inch. An adult rat’s jaws are hundreds of times
more powerful than a person’s. Large muscles allow it to bite down with a force of 7,000 pounds per square
inch, about the same force as a crocodile’s jaws. Its teeth are stronger than copper and lead.
Gnawing through bone and wood is no problem – for a rat. A sheet of iron a half inch thick or a slab
of concrete four inches thick is no problem, either. Rats gnaw through iron cabinets to get at food, and
concrete to get various minerals they need to build bones and teeth. Rats have even gnawed through dam
walls, starting floods that wash away entire villages. Mostly, rats gnaw to wear down their incisors. Since
these grow five inches a year, rats must keep gnawing or die.
Kathy Collins – [email protected]
10
Dear Ed,
In a sec you’ll hear a thunk. At your front door, the one
nobody uses. It’ll rattle the hinges a bit when it lands,
because it’s so weighty and important, a little jangle along
with the thunk, and Joan will look up from whatever she’s
cooking. She will look down in her saucepan, worried that
if she goes to see what it is it’ll boil over. I can see her frown
in the reflection of the bubbly sauce or whatnot. But she’ll
go, she’ll go and see. You won’t, Ed. You wouldn’t. You’re
upstairs probably, sweaty and alone. You should be taking
a shower, but you’re heartbroken on the bed, I hope, so it’s
your sister, Joan, who will open the door even though the
thunk’s for you. You won’t even know or hear what’s being
dumped at your door. You won’t even know why it is even
happened.
It’s a beautiful day, sunny and whatnot. The sort of day
when you think everything will be all right, etc. Not the
right day for this, not for us, who went out when it rains,
from October 5 until November 12. But it’s December now,
and the sky is bright, and it’s clear to me. I’m telling you
why we broke up, Ed. I’m writing it in this letter, the whole
truth of why it happened. And the truth is that I goddamn
loved you so much.
excerpt from Why We Broke Up, by Daniel Handler and art by Maira Kalman
Kathy Collins – [email protected]
11
Buffalo Dusk by Carl Sandburg
The buffaloes are gone.
And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and
how they pawed the prairie sod into dust
with their hoofs, their great heads down
pawing on in a great pageant of dusk,
Those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
And the buffaloes are gone
Aunt Lavinia by Eloise Greenfield
Aunt Lavinia is the one
we never see.
She keeps her address
a mystery.
She’s waiting for the right
clothes and a
house she’s proud of.
I wish she understood
about love.
The Way Things are in Franklin by Jane Kenyon
Even the undertaker is going out
of business. And since the dime store closed,
we can’t get parakeets on Main Street
anymore, or sleeveless gingham smocks
for keeping Church Fair pie off the ample
fronts of the strong, garrulous wives
of pipefitters and road agents.
The hardware’s done for too.
Yesterday,
a Sunday, I saw the proprietors breaking
up shop. The woman struggling with half
a dozen bicycle tires on each arm,
like bangle bracelets, the man balancing
boxes filled with Teflon pans. The windows
had been soaped to frustrate curiosity
or pity, or that cheerless satisfaction
we sometimes feel when others fail.
Kathy Collins – [email protected]
12
Grandma’s Lap
Come.
Climb up on Grandma’s knee. Curl up
in my lap.
Bring a book to share with me
before we take our nap.
We’ll read and rock and rock and read
until we start to doze.
Then, with my arms held round you
tight, we’ll let our eyelids softly close.
Racoon
Aunt Lavinia
Racoon,
with your black ringed eyes and tiny
paws,
startled at your work,
to you my garbage can
is full of treasure.
Aunt Lavinia is the one
we never see.
She keeps her address
a mystery.
She’s waiting for the
right clothes and a
house she’s proud of.
I wish she understood
about love.
By Charlotte Zolotow
By Joy N. Hulme
Picnic Table
Little Bird
Little hurt bird
in my hand
your heart beats
like the pound of the sea
under the warmth
of your soft feathers.
The hot dogs, the mustard,
the paper plates, the ketchup, the
napkins, potato chips,
the lemonade,
the chocolate cake and ice cream –
All gone.
But under the apple tree
the table waits
for next time.
Author unknown
By James Stevenson
Night
Gentle Dog
Rests
on
shadows.
Kisses
my
eyes.
Dips
me
in twilight.
Covers
me
with dreams.
By C. Drew Lamm
Gentle black dog.
She stands stock still
and lets the infant poke her in the eye.
Then she walks away,
saving herself for later
when the child is old enough to need
a gentle black dog.
By James Stevenson
Fireflies
If
you collect
enough fireflies
you could
read secrets
under your blanket
all night long
By Zaro Weil
By Eloise Greenfield
If I Were A Snail
If I were a snail
carrying my house
on my back in the rain,
I would move
next door to you,
so I could see you
every day.
By Kazue Mizamura
Sweets
Here is a list
of likely
words
to taste:
Peppermint
Cinnamon,
Strawberry,
Licorice,
Lime.
Strange
How they manage
To flavor
the paper
page
By Valerie Worth
Kathy Collins – [email protected]
13