Colleen Driggs, Erica Woolway and I are busy wrapping up the manuscript of our new book on literacy, Reading Reconsidered. We’ll put it to bed in a few weeks’ time and you should see it on shelves next winter. In the meantime here’s an excerpt from the chapter on Close Reading. The topic is something called…
As many readers of this blog know, Colleen Driggs, Erica Woolway and I are in the midst of writing a book on reading. Our MO, as always, is to learn what we can by watching teachers in action. Colleen visited a colleague last week to observe her Close Reading lesson and loved what she saw. She…
Lots of teachers out there are struggling with the idea of Close Reading. We’ve heard as much from folks after our reading workshops sometimes. They get that it’s important; they’re in favor of the idea; they’re eager to try it, but they find the planning and execution challenging. Two of the most frequently mentioned issues are…
In Part 2 of this slated-for-three-parts series on planning for reading lessons, ace reading teacher Colleen Driggs takes you through the lesson materials of fellow ace Maggie Johnson, explaining what’s so effective and how she does it. It’s a bit like Georgia O’Keefe taking a few minutes to walk you through what’s so good about Mary…
We recently spent two days geeking out on Reading and the Common Core at a workshop up here in Albany with 180 of our closest friends from around the country. People left pretty excited about Close Reading and Non-Fiction, but a least a couple of school leaders have followed up with questions about planning, specifically about…