Critical Reading & Writing (OR Close Reading?) with History

So the buzz phrase for language arts that I'm seeing everywhere is Close Reading.  In the district I'm working in, we're focusing on something called Critical Reading strategies (skills and behaviors that AVID identifies for academic success).  With Common Core directing our students to be able to read and then WRITE about what they read (and even citing proper evidence), students will definitely need better reading skills, especially with non-fiction texts.  After doing brief research on what Close Reading is, I feel the Critical Reading strategies we work on are quite similar.  Different name/term for similar things?  That doesn't happen in education (insert sarcasm).

Basically, Critical Reading strategies in our district help teach students skills that they need to read and interact with text on a deeper level.  Some key strategies Critical Reading includes are below with an emphasis on marking the text.  Knowing how to mark text is key because this is how students interact with text no matter what comprehension skill or focus they have while reading.

• mark the text (what is marked is dependent on what the focus is for that lesson)
• purposeful rereading
• ask questions
• pause & connect
• summarize
• analyze evidence
• analyze author's purpose/point of view
• writing to respond to prompts using textual evidence

ANYWAY, I wanted to share some reading and writing strategies I have used in my classroom.  Most of the texts I use are primary sources that relate to our 5th grade history curriculum.  I find that it interests students while challenging them as well.

Pocahontas Myth

The Pocahontas Myth by Chief Roy Crazy Horse article that I used can be found at this link.

Basically, students read about Crazy Horse's viewpoint of Disney's movie version/life story of Pocahontas.  I do show clips of the movie here and there so students who have not seen the movie can get a gist of its outline.

For this text, I chose to focus on clarifying (for meaning) and pausing & connecting text within text.  Therefore, our markings were specific to these strategies. We marked clarifications on the left and connections on the right. A sample of what we did is below:

After we read and marked the text, students were reintroduced to the prompt and they responded to it using a provided template.  In this lesson, students can't just cite anything that seems like evidence.  Crazy Horse provides lots of evidence that suggests historical inaccuracies about Pocahontas, but the prompt specifically asks about what Crazy Horse thinks of Disney's portrayal, not those other aspects.  Students really have to pick and choose which paragraphs have evidence that can back up their answers.  We talked about relevant citing of evidence when we got to this portion of the writing.

Here is the link to my blank writing template for Pocahontas Myth.  Templates can sound like way too much scaffolding, but every student's paper sounds different.  It even allows my lowest students to stay focused a sentence at a time.  I feel it helps guide students to write responses to readings in a more academic way overall, so I use this strategy a lot.  During the lesson, I am also able to discuss ways to cite vs paraphrase, etc.


Native American/Pioneer Hardships

Note!  I guess I actually should have noted this from the beginning... Most of my BIG critical reading lessons take multiple sessions or the whole week's reading block. This is because we interact with the text each day for a different purpose.  This was the best thing I learned during my critical reading training... how to reread with PURPOSE, not just, "well, read it again."

For this lesson, students read TWO letters from history - one from a pioneer and one from a Native American, each describing how the other race has treated them.  They are not necessarily related to each other and we discuss generalizations versus stereotypes beforehand.  However, we also discuss how letters like these give us insight into how many felt from different cultural backgrounds.  Anyway, even though the letters are markedly different, the writing prompt asks students to find similarities between the letters.  Knowing the prompt beforehand gives students a focus as they are reading.

Letters I used for this lesson are found in this book.

Here's a student sample from marking text to writing using the template before writing the final draft. This is where you can get the suggested lesson layout and teacher masters that I made for the lesson. Reading and writing to these two letters took us the entire week's reading block.


Shot Heard 'Round the World

So who did shoot first?  I had the wonderful opportunity to attend a summer seminar through National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) specifically about the Shot Heard 'Round the World where specialists and historians gave us the grand tours and talks right in the areas of Boston, Lexington, and Concord.  Prior to this, I had such difficulty teaching the topic when we got to it in history...I kind of just played Schoolhouse Rock's Shot Heard 'Round the World, read about Paul Revere, and moved on quickly.  My bad.

Now I have these fun (yes, the kids love it!) lessons/ideas.  It's basically reading about primary sources from both sides blaming the other for shooting first.  It's the he said/she said blame game they do outside at recess anyway!  Here are the primary sources, teacher materials, & lessons from Minute Man National Historic Park.  I didn't create this lesson.  It's pretty much laid out.   I did supplement it with charts to guide students and created writing templates students used to respond to the readings.

We read General Gage's orders (so students know what the British plan was) and then three accounts.  (I specifically chose an odd number of accounts because, like figuring out student issues from the playground, you don't always have equal opinions on both sides, but still have to figure out what you think happened.)  We read through each account and noted information on the chart.  The highlights that you see were when students went back through all three accounts and noted any similarities among them to find clues that would help us conclude certain events of that fateful morning.

This is the link to my teacher created materials for the Lexington/Concord primary sources lesson to the link above.

• This includes a chart/writing template for "reading" the Doolittle prints to analyze the perspective of the artist (not featured here).
• The lesson featured here is also on the link and includes a pre-write, chart to note things about the different accounts, and a template for responding to the prompt.

Umm, why don't I have a picture sample of the student writing on the template?  You'll have to use your imagination.  Shucks!

Paul Revere's Ride

This lesson was shortly after we discussed Lexington/Concord, other riders, etc.  I wanted to go over Longfellow's poem for meaning, discuss inaccuracies, historical background and timing of when it was written, and his purpose for writing the poem. 

Some sample text markings are in the pictures below:

This lesson was literally JUST before I went on maternity leave and didn't want to plan too much that could not be taken over by someone else without much direction, so I didn't do a writing activity with this lesson. Click here to access the poem with margins on both sides for marking as well as lesson sequence ideas. For this lesson, you could even do some type of compare/contrast or analyzing of evidence with multiple sources since there were riders other than Paul Revere.  This Mc-Graw Hill Paul Revere lesson may be helpful to you as well.



You could teach critical reading strategies with so many other sources.  Here are just a few more ideas that I have used (I'm a bit partial to history!):

• Star Spangled Banner
• Gettysburg Address
• Preamble
• "I Have a Dream" speech - see this MLK post or click here for a marked sample
• Primary sources like letters, diary accounts, or propaganda...I make sure I choose age appropriate length and understanding ones
• Current articles with interesting topics (i.e. cell phones, uniforms, school lunches, etc.)... see Newsela
• Song lyrics!
• Text from reading books
• Math word problems
• science text
• use your imagination!

I always tell students that history is like a billion piece puzzle and we don't have all the pieces... nor will we find them all.  As historians, we have to continue to look for pieces, but analyze what we've got in order to get the best idea of what actually occurred...since we don't really know.  This is why I LOVE using historical sources for critical reading.  I am teaching reading, writing, and history all at the same time!