• 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
×

August 18, 2015 Instruction & Curriculum

What is Close and Critical Reading?

  • 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
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

More than six years ago my school district found itself on the state's list of failing schools. We were not making annual yearly progress (AYP) and it was becoming evident that we couldn't keep doing what we had always been doing. Our demographics had drastically changed when the industry-heavy area began to crumble and families were moving out rather than into the district.

Our students were no longer coming to us with the same prior knowledge, reading support, or early childhood education, and so we needed to change how we were teaching across all grade levels and subjects.

Since putting literacy as the center of all of our school improvement (SI) goals every year, our students have made huge strides. We have been building on our literacy plan, but we started with a few core strategies, one being Close and Critical Reading.

Close and Critical Reading, or CCR as it's known by our teachers, students, and parents, is a careful, purposeful reading of a text. It's teaching kids how to really read rather than "search and find" for answers to basic, low-level questions. It is designed to help students learn to do the higher-level thinking of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

There are four focus question of CCR:

What does the text say? This question helps students focus on finding main ideas and points, summarizing and paraphrasing, and basic comprehension of a text.

How does the text say it? This requires students to look at word choice, tone, bias, figurative language, rhetorical devices, sentence structure, etc. Students are asked to analyze the text.

Why does the author say it? Here, students are asked to think about purpose, but also make inferences. What message or take-away does the author want the reader to walk away with? What else can you infer about the subject/opinion/etc based on what is written?

What connections can be made? Finally, master readers make connections to texts with their own prior knowledge of the world and their own experiences. Students are asked to connect not just to the text, but to the message and/or inferences made from the text. Rather than just make a personal connect, students should be evaluating how this text fits into society as well.

These questions can--and should--be used across the curriculum and across the grade levels. Close and Critical Reading skills will help students go beyond the reading of fiction and into the mastery of more content-specific texts,which tend to be more difficult for younger readers.

In the coming weeks, I will be doing a series of posts focusing on each of the four CCR questions and how they can be used across grade levels and curricula. If you have specific questions that you would like to see addressed, please leave those in the comments below.

Close Reading

 

Related posts:

Have You Tried Socratic Seminars Yet? In Defense of Standardized Testing: A Reflection The New Teacher Chronicles: The Benefits of Cross-Curricular Education Reading Groups, A Valuable Tool
« SPED Students – Where Do They Belong?
Starting the New Year Full of Possibilities »

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. We have over 45+ writers worldwide and boast over twelve million page views. We will advocate for honest dialogue with teachers about improving public education through articles, events, and social media. 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

Popular Posts

  • The Building Blocks for Strong Middle and High School Writers
  • Coping with the Loss and Grief of a Teacher Bestie
  • The Case for More Accountability: It's Time to Blame the Parents
  • Equity In TAG Implementation: Pull-Out Services Vs. Differentiated Instruction

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 © 2023 The Educator's Room.

The owner of this website does not consent to the content on this website being used or downloaded by any third parties for the purposes of developing, training or operating artificial intelligence or other machine learning systems (“Artificial Intelligence Purposes”), except as authorized by the owner in writing (including written electronic communication). Absent such consent, users of this website, including any third parties accessing the website through automated systems, are prohibited from using any of the content on the website for Artificial Intelligence Purposes. Users or automated systems that fail to respect these choices will be considered to have breached The Educator's Room Agreement.  

We have included on the pages of this website a robots meta tag with the “noai” or “noimageai” directive in the head section of the HTML page. Please note that even if such directives are not present on any web page or content file, this website still does not grant consent to use any content for Artificial Intelligence Purposes unless such consent is expressly contained.