Close reading isn’t about just ticking through words on a page; it’s about absorbing ideas and expanding on them. In this lesson, students will use this strategy to make interpretations about a character's emotions through their actions.
Students will be able to use close reading strategies to read a text and use character emotions to develop a theory about the character.
The adjustment to the whole group lesson is a modification to differentiate for children who are English learners.
EL adjustments
Introduction
(5 minutes)
As a class, review what the students have learned about close reading. If this is an introduction to the concept, start by defining the term close reading.
Ask students how they would define close reading. Allow different students to explain in their own words what close reading is.
Once students have answered, explain that close reading is reading through a "lens" to focus on one aspect of the book. For example, during the last lesson, the class read through the lens of emotion.
Explain that reading through a lens helps students better understand and analyze different texts.
Tell the class that today, they will be reading through a lens of character emotions. Activate prior knowledge with discussion questions, such as: "What do character emotions refer to?"
Beginning
Allows ELs to participate in the conversations in their home language (L1) or their new language (L2) and provide a word bank of terms they could choose to use in the discussions.
Ask them to reword the definition and key ideas behind close reading.
Intermediate
Allow students to use a sentence stem when sharing their ideas about close reading and characters' emotions.
Allow ELs to role-play some emotions that they've seen in other texts.