About 10 years ago, while I was teaching 3rd grade, I attended professional development on Close Reading. I loved it and developed many close reading lessons for my 3rd graders about the topics we were studying.
It has been a while since I have worked on close reading with my students now that I am teaching 2nd grade, but I'm reading to jump back in with some of my students.
One of the wonderful aspects of 2nd grade is the incredible amount of growth that occurs over the course of a year. Students really develop independence and also start the transition from learning to read to reading to learn. As with every other year, I have students in my class who are in a wide variety of places in this process. Some are still focusing on developing decoding skills. Others are decoding really well and our focus is now on comprehension and really exploring author's craft and looking at a text closely. Enter in close reading.
After the Thanksgiving break, I am going to introduce close reading to several of my small groups. What I love about close reading is that after reading the entire text, we dive deep into several portions focusing on the language used, text structure, and answering text-based questions. I plan to start with an introduction to close reading I have used successful in the past with 3rd graders and then go from there. I will be developing some more close reads to be used with younger students. These are important skills that students can benefit from.
One of my favorite parts of the day is working in small groups with students during our reading block. I love the magic of reading, the growth that occurs, the lightbulb moments as students apply the skills, and the conversations we have.
If you are looking to use close reading, here is my plan for introducing close reads on TPT. It can be used with a variety of grade levels as you introduce the process. More updated close reading plans will be coming as well.
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