Falling in Love with Close Reading: A Way with Words

Hey, ya'll!  I'm back again with chapter 3 of Falling in Love with Close Reading.

To be completely honest, I haven't had much time to read.  I'm only half way through chapter 4.  We just finished our state testing last week... how exhausting!  I'm so glad that is over with.  Now, we must survive the remainder of May... and let me tell you... the kiddos are CRAY-CRAY!

Chapter 3 was about word choice.  It's something that, as teachers, we have always considered, but this chapter takes the meaning deeper.  I always tell my students to get out their shovels and dig deeper.  It's kind of quirky, but they always seem to understand what I mean.

That's exactly what chapter 3 is all about.  There are two huge ideas that I want to share with you today.

Something that I want to use next year is the use of media to introduce the concept that "everyone chooses their words for a purpose."  It is suggested to use commercials and ads as examples.  The purpose of this activity is to get the students to look closely at the word choice of the commercials and ads.  Students listen to the commercial or ad, record words the hear and how many times they are used, then have the student make word clouds.  When students are finished, they can look at the word cloud and clearly see the most frequently used words.  Teachers can extend the activity by having the students record WHY? they think the author chose to use those words.

The authors suggest that you can close read to analyze word choice as well as the tone of the text by reading through a lens.  This reading through a lens is used throughout the book.  Some steps to read with a lens for word analysis and tone.  First, read a text with your students and record 1-2 main ideas on the board as the students record some on their paper.  Have students look carefully at the kinds of words and phrases the author used.  Make sure you read slow to give students a chance to jot down words/phrases.  Then, look at all the words and phrases the author used and find patterns in those.  Have students look for groups and ask questions... are there ways the words fit together?  tone?  feeling?  Last, have students start to develop their ideas to understand the text.  Does the inferred main idea match the tone I analyzed from the word choice?  Does it make sense?  If it doesn't, have students go back to redevelop their main idea.  Teachers may need to differentiate at this point, because students will be at different points in their learning.

Chapter 3 goes on to discuss ways to implement this in a narrative text, but the most meaningful ideas to me are the ones mentioned.  I hope this all makes sense to you and is something you can use in your classroom.

Chapter 4 is about the structure of the text... don't miss it!

I hope ya'll have a great week!