Lots of quotations from Native American sources. Text Complexity and the Common Core. Radical Curriculum Sharing at the Open High School of Utah. With flippy red hair, Emily Anderson looks like post-millennial Yvonne Craig (a/k/a Batgirl) -- with a mic headset instead of a mask, and posing as an English teacher at the virtual Open High School of Utah.
Talking to me via Skype, her face is poised, but kinetic. She is probably tapping her toes and simultaneously managing twelve student chat rooms. Anderson's students communicate with her from libraries and homes all over Utah, with some scattered as far away as Guatemala. She admits that switching between information channels and facilitating the needs of 130 kids challenges her, particularly when her kids prefer to study after midnight. "And I'm not a late night girl! " Before OHSU, Anderson taught for six years in a traditional brick and mortar language arts classroom. English: The Wheatley Portfolio. Common Core’s new text studies help teachers guide students through a close read of a carefully chosen text.
Through a cascade of text-dependent questions designed to excavate and explore the key details of a rich, complex text, students gain a better understanding of the content of the text while developing key CCSS-ELA skills. Because students benefit from engaging with new and interesting words in context, certain text-dependent questions center on academic vocabulary. A culminating performance assessment provides an opportunity to gauge student comprehension and mastery of the identified standards. Common Core’s text studies serve as examples of what teachers can do with other carefully-chosen texts.
We’ve prepared six exemplars that draw from literary and information texts already found in our units. Current list of text studies: Kindergarten Unit 1 • My Five Senses by Aliki Kindergarten Unit 3 • Frog and Toad Together by Arnold Lobel Grade 1 Unit 3 • Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. 2011 English Language Arts Summer Academy Resource. Summer Academy ELA. Appendix A.indd. Glossary. Common Core: Now What?:Closing in on Close Reading. A Day in the Life of a Close Reader. We are almost at the end of our 7-week blog-a-thon on #closereading!
We invite YOU to join in! Find more on how-to here. Several selected posts have already been linked to on the Contributors page and we are looking forward to your addition. Let’s closely read the practice of close reading together! In our book, (which is coming out next week – October 17th!) We know, in our bones, that loving something or someone involves knowing that thing or person very well. Hence the title: Falling in Love with Close Reading. So I decided to do an experiment: I would spend an entire day as a close reader of life, and share what insights I find. 1.
I kicked off my close reading day with coffee, looking at my schedule, feeling the now common tug of stress and excitement when looking ahead to a full, action-packed day. Then I remembered a blog post Chris wrote awhile back about how what we spend time doing reveals what we value, and that we should spend more time doing what matters most to us. 1. 1. Blog-a-thon Post 1: What #CloseReading Isn’t (Or At Least Shouldn’t Be)
Welcome to the first post in our 7-week blog-a-thon on #closereading.
We invite YOU to join in! Find more on how-to here. Several selected posts will be linked to on the Contributors page. Let’s closely read the practice of close reading together! Close Reading Isn’t Just Anything Just as I suddenly–and against my will–have now heard hundreds of people use the term “twerking” in near constant use, from the VMAs to news anchors to walking into the grocery store… and I don’t think everyone is using it correctly (if you don’t know the definition, please do not hold me accountable for what you google)…, it seems that once a term comes in vogue everyone uses it to define everything. The term “close reading” seems to be experiencing a similar misapplied overuse: What were once called “textbook questions” are now being called close reading.Excuse me, is that classroom of students independently reading? Close Reading Is… We find Patricia Kain’s work from the Writing Center at Harvard instructive.
Choice Literacy - Articles & Videos - Full Article. Franki Sibberson chats with Chris Lehman and Kate Roberts about close reading in this 30-minute podcast.
Chris and Kate are the authors of Falling in Love with Close Reading: Lessons for Analyzing Texts -- and Life from Heinemann. Chris blogs at and Kate blogs with Maggie Beattie Roberts at indent. A full transcript is available below the player. Franki Sibberson: You've both done a lot of work with close reading as it relates to the common core. Chris Lehman: Sure. When Kate and I were doing research on our book and working in classrooms on close reading, one place we went to was trying to understand how are people defining it? Another, as we looked over the decades of close reading work, I think one big place that a lot of the conversation now draws from is around the 1940's, there was a group at universities that were trying to find a way to teach students to do literary criticism.
Around that same time, there were other literary critics doing the same thing. Kate Roberts: Yeah.