Yesterday, I attended a workshop given by Laura Robb. Laura talked about the importance of reading and giving students time to read in school and setting expectations for them to read at home.
Laura shared strategies for close reading to help students develop and organize their knowledge.
Practice these strategies with the students and then have them do it independently.
- First, students read the title and ask themselves, "What do I know about this topic?"
- Then, students set a purpose by turning the title into a question.
- After that, students activate their own knowledge by reading the first and last paragraphs of the text.
- One strategy is to write four words related to the reading.
- Then they pick one word and make a connection to the text.
- Another strategy is students write down anything they remembered about the two paragraphs(1st and last) and jot down questions they may have.
- Next the students share the details they remembered from reading the two paragraphs.
- After that the students read the whole text silently to find the gist and make a claim (thesis statement)
- Then students answer the questions and defend their claim with text evidence.
- Students will have general statements to write an introduction for an analytical essay.
- Afterwards, students reread the text closely to uncover literary devices such as elements and techniques the author used.
- Finally, complete the analytical essay with each part completed, the thesis statement, an introduction, cited evidence from the text, a conclusion, and a title.
- Students repeat these steps with 3 to 4 texts to find a common theme.
Laura Robb's newest book is Unlocking Complex Texts: A Systematic Framework for Building Adolescents’ Comprehension.
