Reading Like a Sleuth

Like most of you, this year I am dipping my toes in the waters of close reading. Our district provided a professional development for close reading last year, but I left it as a "2" on the Marzano learning scale. Yikes! How was I going to teach it?!

I've been scouring education sites, blogs, and Pinterest for more information on close reading, as well as hunting down resources, and finally ventured into teaching it last week. I was completely honest with my class and explained that although I wasn't a "4" on the learning scale, I would do my best to teach what I understood about close reading. I had already taught annotation (using this awesome freebie!) and my kiddos are getting better at it - one of my gals even annotated her math word problem today, without being asked to! Impressive! But now it was time to dig deeper. 

Luckily, today I got an email from We are Teachers with two fantastic FREE resources that are totally going to help me better understand close reading, help me teach close reading, and support students as they become close readers. The first is a handy and quick close reading guide for teachers.  

The second freebie, a close reading guide specifically for students. As you can imagine, this was immediately printed and copied. These will be going straight into our reading workshop binders as convenient references. I especially love the "Make your case" and "Prove it!"tips. 

Thank you We are Teachers for these great resources! Ok friends, I'd love any and all advice/resources/links/etc. on close reading!