What is Close Reading?

Close Reading is a strategy to improve reading comprehension skills.  Close Reading refers to detailed reading. Similar to detectives, children learn to pay close attention to clues in the text to examine the information or message shared by the author.

Reading a text closely more than once, teaches children how to access increased levels of meaning.

Children then gain practice in looking for clues in the text to determine the information or message shared by the author.

Begin by introducing close reading with a short non-fiction text/passage.  The text should follow a structure that children know.  Examples include: description, cause and effect, problem and solution, and compare and contrast.

 Below is an example of a short non-fiction text that follows a compare and contrast structure.

During close reading children are expected to find evidence in the text to support their answers. During each read children are asked a text dependent question and are expected to make annotations of evidence found in the text to support their answer.

 First read dependent question:  What is the topic of the passage?  In this example children were asked to circle words in the text to support their answer. 

Second read text dependent question: What does the author want you to understand about the topic? or What is the author’s purpose for writing the text? Children were asked to highlight words in the text to support their answer.

Clue words are used to identify the relationship of a compare and contrast story structure.

Third read text dependent question - How does the author explain the confusion? Children were asked to underline words in the text to support their answer.

Close reading video - Great introduction for students and easy to pause for review or discussion