Common Core and Close Reading: Shouldn’t College Work Stay in College?
Common Core English Language Arts uses close reading even in the early grades. What some might not realize is close reading comes from college. If you Google “college and close reading,” numerous PDF files and websites surface about how to teach college students close reading, and if you Google “kindergarten and close reading” almost an equal number of how to teach close reading websites also pop up.
Harvard’s Writing Center has a website called “How to Do a Close Reading.” Another article by Jarrell D. Wright out of the University of Pittsburgh is titled “How to Teach Close Reading: Demystifying Literacy Analysis for Undergraduates.”
Tell me, if close reading mystifies college students, how baffling must close reading be for kindergartners?
Shouldn’t college work stay in college?
Think of it this way, you wouldn’t make a five year old wear an eighteen or nineteen year old’s shoes. The shoes wouldn’t fit! So why do reformers think they can make college work fit the brain of a kindergartner? It defies reason.
San Diego State University Professors Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey, who appear to support Common Core State Standards, discuss close reading at the elementary level in a paper published in The Reading Teacher titled “Close Reading in Elementary Schools.” They write about close reading and the use of text complexity, exemplars, frontloading, scaffolding, details, vocabulary, the author’s purpose, opinion Common Core and Close Reading: Shouldn’t College Work Stay in College?: