What Do We Mean by Close Reading?

Yesterday during a discussion (as a 9th grade teacher), I chatted with a few10th grade teachers. This year all 10th grade teachers are teaching Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. One of the teachers said, "it's a hard read, the kids really struggled." It's probably been half a decade since I read Stevenson's novel, but I do remember moments that the text is mired in legal language. Another teacher remarked, "well... they need to become discernible readers and figure out what is essential to the story and what's not."

Discernible readers? 10th graders? Who are these 10th grade discernible readers? 

A larger discussion unfolded about close reading and now to navigate a tricky text.

The four of us kibitzed about the successes and failures in each of our classrooms. The conversation naturally steered towards close reading. But what became quickly evident: when we talked about close reading, the four of us were talking about entirely different concepts.

It's clear when we talked about close reading we can mean:

Rereading

Annotation

Asking questions

Post-it note 

Underlining or highlighting

Haven't we moved past this? Could anyone call

this discernible reading?

This is something that's percolating on the periphery of my classroom for some time now. What does close reading really mean? How do you teach it, especially at the high school level?

Today we're going to examine one simple strategy: rereading.

Lens Theory

For years now, myself and a few other teachers (@MitchellHGHS for example) have taught a variety of literary criticisms to our upper level students (junior / senior mixed classes). We've examined texts through Feminist lens, Queer Theory, and Psychoanalytical to name a few.

But this year I ventured into New Criticism. You know this criticism: it's the old fuddy duddy criticism that is concerned with the text itself and only the text. The criticism that looks for literary terms and unifies context and subtext with literary elements in order to generate larger thematic questions.

Well lo and behold that by teaching this criticism, I realized, my teaching of rereading has been less than desirable. 

Students Know What You Mean When You Say Close Reading

I asked my students, "What do I mean when I say close reading?" The hands raised and they all said the usual rereading, pen and paper, going slower, etc. But do my students ever actually close read? No. Not really. 

Why? It's too performative. Alright they might reread a paragraph from time to time when they're completely lost, but does that mean they're closely reading? Certainly not.

And when I tell them to reread a passage, what am I really asking? Until this point, I meant literally rereading, but isn't that just for clarification or searching for a quote or something equally perfunctory?

Students Need Direction on How to Reread?

By following the theory of New Criticism, my students performed a close reading with remarkable success. It started out simple. 

I found a passage from Gatsby (something that seems innocuous but was actually quite dense).We read it as a class together.  I then asked the following questions, "What is happening? Who are the characters? What are they doing? Where is this taking place?"

Students spent 3 minutes gathering their thoughts and we did a quick share aloud. Students noted the characters: Nick, Tom, Myrtle, but then also asked, "what about the dog? Is he a character? And what about the elevator boy? We added all of them to the list.

For our second reading, students needed to examine literary elements. Write out which ones they notice. We went line by line as students pointed out various literary terms. 

I should note here, students didn't always have the language of the literary term, but they could describe it. For examine, one student said, "I see "small room" and "large furniture" and another student then said, "isn't that juxtaposition?" Another student said, "they mention Versailles." I asked, "does anyone knew what a reference to a literary or historical person, place or thing is called?" There was silence. I gave them the term, allusion.

The second reading not only solidified the complexity of the passage, but meaning continued to take shape and develop.

I then reread a third time and said, "What is the theme of this excerpt? How is this theme supported by your analysis of plot and literary elements?"

Students took a few minutes to write down and they had a lot to say. Some talked about foreshadowing, others about tension and others about bewilderment and drunkenness. They read closely (shocker, right?)

But it was because it wasn't just reading. It was rereading with a purpose.

So What Do We Mean When We Say Reread?

I don't think any of this feels revelatory or that I've stumbled upon a particular reckoning, but the process worked. I shared it with my colleagues and they said, "Yes, I would like when we talk about rereading that we mean that." And that is what it's all about. Finding common language and teaching a common skill.

Does it make my students discernible readers? Not quite. Might they be able to analyze a passage a little closer with a little more purpose? With time and practice. This is something that initially was taught just for lens theory, but the practice was too good. I'm bringing it to the freshmen, so that maybe - just maybe - they'll be a little more successful on their next close reading and ventures into rereading. 

Daniel Valentin teaches English 9, Humanities, and American Dream at Horace Greeley High School. He is currently reading White Smoke by Tiffany Jackson and is listening to The Guilty by James Patterson. He wants his students to feel empowered through books. Follow him on Twitter @DanielJValentin