• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Advertising
  • Write for Us
  • Job Board
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
    • Consulting
    • Advertising
  • Shop
    • Books
    • Shirts

The Educators Room logo

  • Start Here
    • Impact Statements: Teacher Expertise
    • Newsletter
  • Browse Topics
    • Content Strategies
      • Literacy
      • Mathematics
      • Social Studies
      • Educational Technology
      • ELL & ESOL
      • Fine Arts
      • Special Education
      • Popular Topics
        • Teacher Self-Care
        • Instructional Coach Files
        • Common Core
        • The Traveling Teacher
        • The Unemployed Teacher
        • The New Teacher Chronicles
        • Book Review
        • Grade Levels
          • Elementary (K-5)
          • Middle (6-8)
          • Adult
          • New Teacher Bootcamp
          • Hot Button Topics
            • Menu Item
              • Principals' Corner
              • Charter Schools
              • Confessions of a Teacher
              • Interviews
              • The State of Education
              • Stellar Educator of the Week
            • Menu
              • How to Fix Education
              • Featured
              • Ask a Teacher
              • Teacher Branding
              • Current Events
  • Podcasts
  • Courses
    • Practicing Self-Care to Avoid Teacher Burnout- An 8 Week Course
    • Becoming An Educational Consultant
    • Teacher Branding 101:Teachers are The Experts
    • The Learning Academy
    • Books
    • Shirts
  • Education in Atlanta
  • Teacher Self-Care
  • The Coach's Academy
menu icon
go to homepage
subscribe
search icon
Homepage link
  • Advertising
  • Write for Us
  • Job Board
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
    • Consulting
    • Advertising
  • Shop
    • Books
    • Shirts
×

September 4, 2015 Featured

Close and Critical Reading: Author's Craft

  • About the Author
  • Latest Posts

About Katie Sluiter

Katie Sluiter is currently an 8th English teacher in West Michigan. She has taught middle school, high school, and community college and has her Masters Degree and is currently working on her doctoral degree in Teaching English. Her writing has been featured on Writers Who Care, The Nerdy Book Club, and Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday. She is a member of the National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE), the Michigan Council of Teachers of English (MCTE) and ALAN (the Assembly on Literature of Adolescents of the NCTE). She is a National Writing Project participant, has presented at both state and national conferences, and has been published in the Language Arts Journal of Michigan multiple times.
  • Shaking Up Short Stories - August 8, 2019
  • Ditch the Summer Reading Requirements - July 19, 2019
  • Celebrate Pride With Your Classroom Library - June 26, 2019
  • Bringing Climate Change into the E/LA Classroom - May 20, 2019
  • YA Books for Mental Health Awareness - October 8, 2018
  • Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month with Book Talks - September 26, 2018
  • 180 Days: Writing and Reading Maps and Mentors for A Year in ELA - September 16, 2018
  • Teaching Immigration Empathy: Why Refugee by Alan Gratz Should Be Added To Your Curriculum - July 8, 2018
  • Coaching the Coaches: the Benefits of Instructional Coaches - January 28, 2018
  • Six-Word Memoirs as an Introduction to Narrative Writing - September 24, 2017

This post is the second in my series on strategies for teaching students to do Close and Critical Reading (CCR). The first post defining it is here. The next one, about strategies for teaching summary, is here.

The second CCR question is How does the author say it?

Students need to understand what rhetorical devices are and how to identify them in order to answer this question. For many students just figuring out how to begin to answer this question is a struggle. There is just so much "stuff" that falls into this category!

To streamline it for students, our district has broken down three areas students should address when they are answering the "how" question about a passage.

Text Type

The first thing anyone does when they read, whether they do it consciously or not, is decide if what they are reading is fiction or nonfiction. From there readers can choose what genre they are reading. Most of the reading students do in a full-school day is going to be nonfiction. They get fiction and all its genres in English class, but the rest of the day is pretty devoted to non-fiction. Knowing the genre of writing they are reading is helpful for students to determine purpose. Is the piece trying to inform, persuade, or entertain them? Or something else entirely?

Structure Features

This area can be broken down further into four sub-categories: Point of View, Tone/Mood, Organization, and Sentence Syntax. Students--especially at the junior high level--are not expected to write extensively about each of these categories, but they should be able choose which of them are the most important to the piece they read in terms of helping the reader understand purpose.

Language

This can be broken down into two sub-categories: word choice and figurative language. Word choice includes the kinds of words the author uses to make his/her purpose known to the reader. Is it simple language or is it full of technical jargon? Is it a scholarly piece or something vulgar? Figurative language refers to the devices the author uses: simile, metaphor, imagery, etc.

You can see how students can get overwhelmed and bogged down when a teacher asks, "how does the author say it?" There is so much to consider. A lot of the devices above--like Language, Tone, and Sentence Syntax--are part of the ELA curriculum, but all content areas can teach text type and word choice. As a reader and an expert in your area, you probably read articles, essays, reports, etc about your content. Teach students to do what you do when you read it.

How do you evaluate whether something you are reading is trying to inform you or persuade you? What do you do when you see a graph in an article you are reading? How do you know if you've stumbled upon satire? These are the things our students do not come to us knowing.

In English, we can teach students about words and sentences and how writers choose those for meaning, but we cannot teach them why mathematicians write they way they do. Or how a science report should be read. We are not going over nutritional guidelines or sport handbooks.

All content areas have texts that are specific to their content, and students need to learn to be able to take any piece of writing and talk about the words, features, and purpose. Being able to do this will not just create better readers out of our students, but better writers and better thinkers too.

Close Reading

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Related posts:

Rainbow it Up! The Color-Coded Essay Default ThumbnailHow Do You... DBQ? Close and Critical Reading: What's the Point? Using Literature Circles with YA Historical Fiction
« The Classroom as a Transformative Space
Bilingual Education: Good For Everyone... and Dangerous Too »

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

The Educator's Room was launched in 2012 to amplify the voice of educators. To date, we have over 45+ writers from around the world and boast over twelve million page views. Through articles, events, and social media we will advocate for honest dialogue with teachers about how to improve public education. This mission is especially important when reporting on education in our community; therefore, we commit our readers to integrity, accuracy, and independence in education reporting. To join our mailing list, click here.

What we do

At The Educator's Room, we focus on amplifying and honoring the voice of educators as experts in education. To date, we have over 40 staff writers/teachers from around the world.

Popular Posts

  • My Union Showed Up for Me, and I'll Never Forget It
  • Your Students Deserve a Diverse Classroom Library. Here's How to Set It Up.
  • You Don't Have to Watch the Tyre Nichols Video, But Be Ready to Talk About It
  • "Let's Make This Happen": Following Student Interests to Interest-Based Mentorships

Featured On

Buy Our Books/Courses

How to Leave Your Job in Education

Practicing Self-Care to Avoid Teacher Burnout

Using Your Teacher Expertise to Become an Educational Consultant

Check out our books on teaching and learning!

The Learning Academy

Footer

↑ back to top

About

  • Privacy Policy
  • Disclaimer
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Accessibility Policy

Newsletter

  • Sign Up! for emails and updates

Contact

  • Contact
  • Services
  • Media Kit
  • FAQ

 

Copyright © 2021 The Educator's Room.