Exploring Close Reading Routines for Remote Learning

Planning for a once a week 60 minute PLG that is sandwiched in between four back-to-back teaching periods and a staff meeting on Friday afternoon sure does have my brain working overtime! My son has many times explained the sweet spot of the bat to me, and I think that's what I'm seeking with PLG. In order for PLG to feel like a "homerun" for all, it's important to find that balance of sharing resources and ideas without risking cognitive overload and shut down. As with our students, the truly difficult part of this is that everyone's threshold for shutting down varies! Overall, though, the majority of the group appreciated time to share successes and struggles with each other and also to explore a resource of their choice. 

Despite having to adjust our practice and potentially let go of many of the activities and materials we would use in a typical school year, close reading is a practice that will always be an important one for students. It was really nice to see the energy and enthusiasm of the discussion around close reading and the possible ways these strategies could be used with our students. 

The Annotation Routine for Remote Learning offered a framework that could be used repeatedly with different texts, for different purposes and in a variety of ways. In the example video, the teacher had a small number of students working in the same document and gave them a specific focus for their reading and annotation.  I appreciated the way she had her Google Doc set up with the Annotation Focus grid set in the Header and in the Footer she had sentence starters for how students might respond to their classmate's comments. 

I had shared this annotation routine with an 8th grade ELA teacher earlier in the week and she used it with a small excerpt of Fahrenheit 451. Logistically, there were a couple of things to consider when setting this up.

1. To avoid the overwhelming and possibly distracting scenarios of 25+ students all highlighting and commenting in the same document,  she used breakout rooms and had those smaller groups use a single shared document for annotation. 
2.  She had to group the students as well as create and post links to each of the breakout rooms in the slides.
3.  For the close reading document itself, she had to create multiple copies of the same document and only assign it to specific students (according to how she had grouped them). This was one of those "little details" that could have been the difference between confusion and wasting time or having the class run smoothly! 

I was fortunate enough to join some of the breakout rooms and listen in as the students discussed the small excerpt of text. Students used the Annotation Guide at the top of the document to direct their conversation, especially when they were trying to decide what to highlight and comment about. The number of students in each group (4-5 max) was a really nice amount of students to allow for multiple voices as well as for a controlled number of readers highlighting and commenting in the document. 

                                                

 Annotation Routine, student example

Routine from New Visions for Public Schools

While certain groups needed more support than others, each group I visited was grappling with the text to some degree. Some students felt more comfortable highlighting the text only so I would either type in Chat or ask out loud if they highlighted that because the language grabbed their attention or because it revealed something about Montag (the annotation focus questions). Each time, the student was able to provide a reason for their highlighting. As a support, I inserted a comment, transcribed their explanation and attributed their name. I then encouraged them to go back and comment on other areas they had highlighted. 

This worked really well with the small group sizes created by the teacher. Also, she was asking them to annotate with a character and language focus that they had previously done together with a different excerpt from the novel. Apply a familiar annotation focus to a new piece of text allowed the students to draw on prior experiences with close reading.  I could also see using this format for a formative assessment with a new piece of text and produce a short written response. Alternatively, I could imagine assigning partners and having students first independently annotate their own document. After independent annotation, students could swap documents and respond to each other's annotations using comments. 

Three Reads Protocol from New Visions for Public Schools was another close reading approach that some of us explored in PLG. This was protocol was not specifically adapted for remote learning,  but I could easily see using this remotely in both a live lesson or as independent work. 

The purpose of the protocol is basically to have students focus in on a much smaller excerpt of a larger text and to read it at least three times, each for a different purpose. The explanation and examples of the Three Reads Protocol provide several different ways you might tweak the purposes for which students read. While you might have students read to Comprehend, Analyze, and Connect, you could change these purposes and have students read to focus on Vocabulary, the Main Idea, and Comprehension. The reading focuses you have for students can change depending on the goal, the complexity of the text, and the amount of scaffolding needed. 

I used the same excerpt from Fahrenheit 451 in the example below to show how I might use this protocol. This could be done in small groups with students working from the same document, highlighting and adding text to the blank boxes. The Three Reads Protocol could also be done independently, with students bring their notes to small group or whole group conversations. 

Example of Three Reads Protocol using Fahrenheit

As with any new routine, I'd model the Three Reads Protocol whole group so students could hear the thought process and see how to annotate.  The first time I asked students to use this protocol, independently or in small groups, I would probably choose a piece of text we'd already read once and ask them to read for purposes we'd previously done together in class. 

I look forward to seeing how these, and other close reading routines, get  incorporated into remote ELA classrooms!