Man oh man do I wish I could be as excited as so many of my colleagues seem to be about close reading, the practice of examining short, complex texts until your brain hemorrhages. (No, wait. That's beyond the standard. I think...)
Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time feeling the passion for close reading because I can't figure out how it's anything new. Most strange too because people are certainly acting like it's new. (Not that my inability to figure out something that everyone else seems to innately get is anything new either.)
Yet, last I checked, taking a written passage then pulling at it like your making taffy has been every teacher's modus operandi since the Greeks sat in a circle to chew the literary fat.. Hmmm.. maybe that's what all the hullabaloo is about -teachers grasping that they have free license to do what they like doing best (not so much the fat chewing.).
Anyway, I'm doing what I always do begining from a point of non-sense in the hope that it leads to some form of clarity for anyone reading. Here's the skinny. I was asked to present my understanding of close reading as is connects to the Common Core State Standards. I did what we all do. Went pale, tried to get out of it, accepted my fate, told myself it's nothing we're not doing already (not true in too many ways to list), and scoured the top 10 listed links to all of my Google searches. (I may have gone to page two, links 11-20 a few times even. Shows resolve.) Then, lacking any creating, which you already concluded from my Internet only research, I slapped together a PowerPoint. Hey! If I have to suffer making this, then we will all suffer together watching it.
Below are the slides for that presentation. You'll be missing out on all my blank stares, errs and umms because there is no audio for it. Be very thankful for that.
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