Close Reading
What is Close Reading?
A strategy the allow readers to dig deeper into a text by:
- Reading and re-reading the text to gather meaning and determine the author's purpose.
- Highlighting important vocabulary words and using context clues to figure out the meaning of them.
- Providing evidence and support for answers to comprehension questions by using the text itself.
According to information found on http://www.teachthought.com/featured/what-close-reading-actually-means/ written by Grant Wiggins, Ed.D
A University of Washington handout for students summarizes the aim of close reading as follows:
The goal of any close reading is the following:
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an ability to understand the general content of a text even when you don’t understand every word or concept in it.
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an ability to spot techniques that writers use to get their ideas and feelings across and to explain how they work.
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an ability to judge whether techniques the writer has used succeed or fail and an ability to compare and contrast the successes and failures of different writers’ techniques.