Resource Hub
Explore guides, research papers, policy briefs, and tools to aid decisions on standards and assessments.
Implementing English Language Arts Common Core State Standards: Close Reading of Text
The Alliance for Excellent Education held a webinar moderated by Bob Wise, president of the Alliance and former governor of West Virginia. Sheila Brown and Lee Kappes, of the Aspen Institute, discussed the use of close reading as a key instructional approach for building students’ abilities to assess, evaluate, and synthesize information from text. Practitioner-leader Lynn Dougherty-Underwood, from Hillsborough County Public Schools (Florida), discussed what integration of this instructional approach looks like in practice. The webinar includes presentation slides that can be downloaded.
This webinar provides background information on the history, need, and benefits of new Common Core Staet Standards in general and close reading in particular. A selected number of PowerPoint slides accompany the messages from the four presenters engaging in a discussion on the topic. The challenge of the resource is length (over an hour) of the webinar, which is accompanied by video of the speakers and accompanying talking points from presentation slides. For those unable to sit for this length of time, there is an option to download an audio file for listening offline. For those interested in learning more about close reading and this aspect of the Common Core State Standards, this could be a useful resource; however, those who might desire a more succinct overview might find the length of time needed to engage somewhat frustrating.