A Close Look at Close Reading: Teaching Students to Analyze Complex Texts, Grades 6–12

Barbara Moss, Diane Lapp, Maria Grant & Kelly Johnson

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About This Book

The Common Core State Standards have put close reading in the spotlight as never before. Although middle and high school teachers want and need students to connect with, analyze, and learn from both literary and informational texts, many are unsure how to foster the skills students must have in order to develop deep and nuanced understanding of complicated content.

Is there a process to follow? How is close reading different from shared reading and other common literacy practices? How do you prepare students to have their ability to analyze complex texts measured by high-stakes assessments? And how do you fit close reading instruction and experiences into an already crowded curriculum?

Literacy experts Barbara Moss, Diane Lapp, Maria Grant, and Kelly Johnson answer these questions and more as they explain how to teach middle and high school students to be close readers, how to make close reading a habit of practice across the content areas, and why doing so will build content knowledge.

Informed by the authors’ extensive field experience and enriched by dozens of real-life scenarios and downloadable tools and templates, this book explores

• Text complexity and how to determine if a particular text is right for your learning purposes and your students.
• The process and purpose of close reading, with an emphasis on its role in developing the 21st century thinking, speaking, and writing skills essential for academic communication and college and career readiness.
• How to plan, teach, and manage close reading sessions across the academic disciplines, including the kinds of questions to ask, texts to use, and supports to provide.
• How to assess close reading and help all students—regardless of linguistic, cultural, or academic background—connect deeply with what they read and derive meaning from complex texts.

Equipping students with the tools and process of close reading sets them on the road to becoming analytical and critical thinkers—and empowered and independent learners.

In this comprehensive resource, you'll find everything you need to start their journey.

See the book's table of contents and read excerpts.

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About the Authors

BARBARA MOSS, PhD, is a professor of literacy education at San Diego State University, where she teaches courses at the credential, masters, and doctoral levels in children's literature, content area literacy, and elementary literacy. She has worked as an elementary, middle, and high school English language arts teacher; a reading supervisor; and a literacy coach. Her research interests are related to informational texts and content area literacy in grades K–12.

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DIANE LAPP, EdD, is Distinguished Professor of Education in the Department of Teacher Education at San Diego State University (SDSU), where she teaches both preservice and graduate courses in literacy education. Throughout her career, she has taught in elementary, middle, and high schools, and she has recently had the opportunity to return to the classroom to teach 6th grade English and Earth Science at Health Sciences Middle School in San Diego, where she is also an instructional coach at both the middle school and Health Sciences High and Middle College. Diane’s major areas of research and instruction are issues related to struggling readers and writers, their families, and their teachers.

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MARIA GRANT, EdD, is an associate professor in secondary education at California State University, Fullerton. Her most recent work focuses on the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts, concentrating on support for teachers working to implement the six shifts of ELA standards, move students toward reading more informational text, and use close reading in the classroom. Additionally, she works with teachers to implement key elements of the new Science Framework and the Next Generation Science Standards.

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KELLY JOHNSON, PhD, is a faculty member in teacher education at San Diego State University and a classroom teacher at Health Sciences High and Middle College. She teaches reading methods, classroom management, and liberal studies at SDSU and 9th grade English at the high school level. She also serves as an instructional coach for teachers with varying levels of experience and has appeared in many instructional videos on teacher modeling, assessment and instruction, effective grouping, and writing instruction.

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