Close Reading

A close reading is a careful and purposeful reading. Well actually, it’s rereading. It’s a careful and purposeful rereading of a text. It’s an encounter with the text where students really focus on what the author had to say, what the author’s purpose was, what the words mean, and what the structure of the text tells us.

                            (http://www.mhecommoncoretoolbox.com/close-reading-and-the-ccss-part-1.html)

Students notice features and language used by the author. Students are required to think thoroughly and methodically about the details in a text.

Students determine how a text is organized, and understand the effect of the author’s word choice in a certain passage. Close reading goes “deeper than the text”. It mines what is under the surface of the words. Students eventually evaluate or critique what is written.

When students are taught to read a text closely they become more skilled at locating evidence within a sentence or a paragraph or a page of a text or story. Then orally or in writing, they can justify answers to text-dependent questions based on evidence.

Notes for the teacher:
http://www.webenglishteacher.com/close-reading-middle-school.html