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Step 1: Read
The importance of a quality, reading protocol that is comfortable, repeatable, and accountable cannot be overstated. The Slides to the right share my three reading protocols. Occasionally, the most difficult texts require that I read them aloud to students. Sometimes, we listen to the "texts" first in the form of a speech. No matter the exact appearance in the classroom, an English class is built on reading.
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Step 2: Vocabulary
What is reading, without the vocabulary to understand what you read? It's nothing. We focus on tier two and tier three vocabulary in our classroom. Each unit, we'll focus on ten tier two vocabulary words necessary for general, academic vocabulary. We'll also focus on ten tier-three, domain-specific vocabulary words per passage. By the end of each unit, the most important words will be automatically accessible before being required to write an essay using those words.
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Step 1: Exposure
Step 2: Expertise
Step Three: Evaluation
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Step 3: Close Read
Close reading is sometimes frowned upon as a term that comes from the high-stakes testing, common-core implementation era of education. What it actually is, is an emphasis on the reading process over the irrelevant classroom product for which students are used to skimming. I have no problem teaching students the importance of the process of reading. As an avid and voracious reader, the collective total of all the humans I have ever met have taught me far less than the collective total of all the books I've ever read.
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Close Read Tools:
Close Read Lesson Plan
Classic Gist Directions
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Step 4: Connection to Greater Learning
While I cannot overstate the importance of reading and learning for learning's sake, in school, we just have to prove that we have acquired some knowledge. In my classroom, every text students are ever asked to read will connect on deep levels with all the other texts I've asked them to read. Their learning and connections will then be assessed as a final essay or project. I've found that using a consistent connection tool for each unit helps students to connect texts together to create a meaningful educational schema before being asked to write. In short, when the tool used to connect texts becomes easy to use, the cognitively challenging task of connecting learning becomes easy.
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Unit-by-Unit Connection Tools:
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