Close Reading In Our ISN

While I'm still fairly new at this blogging business and don't have tons of posts up yet, one thing that should be somewhat clear by now is that interactive foldable organizers are my bag when it comes to ISNs! My kids put loads of these foldable organizers into their notebooks and by the end of the year, it's tough to keep them closed because they are just so stuffed.

But, the foldable organizers aren't the only thing that goes in our ISNs. I've mentioned before how we partner our ISNs with close reading. Many times, my students will conduct a close reading of our story to complete their organizer. And then in turn, they use their organizer to answer a literary analysis question. Sometimes though, if we've read a longer short story or are reading a novel, I will photocopy important sections of the piece for students to glue those into their ISNs so they can put their close reading notes on the page as well.

In these couple of pictures, you can see the students conducting a close read in their ISNs. The day before, we had read the short story, "Tuesday of the Other June" by Norma Foz Mazer. The story was about 14 pages in our Holt Reader, making this quite a long, short story (at least for my 6th graders!). It wouldn't be feasible (or helpful!) for my students to do a close read of the ENTIRE story, so instead I photocopied three of the most important sections for students to glue into their notebooks (**Note: these sections were important because they included details essential for supporting the answer to our literary analysis question).

At the top of each section, I have a "task" that guides their reading of that section. We also write down the key that we will be using for marking up this section. The task, and sometimes the key, may change with each section, but they will always guide the students in the direction of our literary analysis question.

Typically, I have students close read with a partner. I find they will actually read the section more times when they are discussing because they keep going back to reference parts of the story in their conversation.

Okay... to summarize how to have students use their ISNs for Close Reading:

1. Photocopy a section of text from a story that you'd like students to close read.
2. Glue it into ISNs.
3. Provide a guiding "task."
4. Discuss and record a Close Reading Key for the section.
5. Have students work with a partner to reread and mark-up the text!!

So, what else do you put in your ISNs? Do you include close reading in yours? Do you have other systems for close reading? I'd love to hear from you!

Thanks for reading!

Happy Teaching!!