Jaclyn DeForge, our Resident Literacy Expert, began her career teaching first and second grade in the South Bronx, and went on to become a literacy coach and earn her Masters of Science in Teaching. In her column she offers teaching and literacy tips for educators.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been talking talked the importance of looking at the standards horizontally as well as vertically, and in today’s post, I’m going to do just that as I walk you through what effective close reading questioning can look like, unpacking one strand at a time using texts of varying complexities. On the docket for today:
Reading Standards for Literature K-3, Craft and Structure, Strand 4
In Kindergarten, the strand reads: Ask and answer questions about unknown words in a text.
Example text: Pencil Talk and Other School Poems by Anastasia Suen & illustrated by Susie Lee Jin
genre: poetry
Strand-specific questions:
- Look at the poem “Pencil Talk.” Which words were tricky for you to sound out? Did you come across any words where you weren’t sure what they meant?***What does the word scratch mean? Bonus: What does the poet mean when she writes “Pencils can talk…but we can’t!“