• It works with a short passage. • The focus is intense. • It will extend from the passage itself to other parts of the text. • It should involve a great deal of exploratory discussion. • It involves rereading.
To help students build capacity with increasingly complex texts and close reading across both fiction and nonfiction, Hiebert (2011) recommends two corresponding goals: • Undertake the close, attentive reading that lies at the heart of understanding and enjoying complex works of literature. • Perform the critical reading necessary to analyze the staggering amount of information available digitally and in print. Given the emphasis on close reading and rereading, many teachers are introducing short texts into the reading menu. Shorter, challenging texts that elicit close reading and rereading draw students from varying ability levels together in a close analysis of more demanding texts. In this way, students can read and reread deliberately while they probe and ponder the meanings of individual words, the order in which sentences unfold, and the development of ideas over the course of the text. To this end, Atwell and Merkel (2016) recommend poetry. Closing Thoughts Although experienced teachers have long engaged their students in a close reading of texts, the ELA standards take close reading to a whole new level, maintaining that reading requires “close scrutiny” of the text through reading and rereading. Teachers are encouraged to guide lessons with a high percentage of text-dependent questions that require students to use the author’s words and evidence drawn directly from the text to support their responses. Students are invited to meld the structure of a work with its meaning, while also paying special attention to the unique features of each text, including, in the case of nonfiction, such structural elements as headings, sidebars, graphics, captions, and quick-read essential facts (Lehmann and Roberts, 2013; Robb, 2013). Still, Beers and Probst (2013) caution: text complexity and close reading is not just about Lexile levels and the “four corners of the page.” It’s the transaction between the reader and the text that not only creates meaning but creates the reason to read. For this reason, Beers and Probst suggest that the key is prompting students to ask their own questions, to live inside the text, noticing everything, questioning everything, and weighing everything they are reading against their lives, the lives of others, and the world around them.
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AUTHENTIC TEXTS AND TEXT COMPLEXITY
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