close reading Archives - David Rickert

Word, or sentence? Teaching Theme

September 9, 2019 By David Rickert Leave a Comment

Theme. It’s one of the most difficult topics to teach students in language arts classes. And theme is never something they master. They have to work hard to get better at it every year.

But is a theme a word, or a sentence?

The goal of close reading and annotating is to arrive at a theme. Most ELA teachers I know will say that a theme is a sentence. Certainly if you say that the theme of a story is “love” you won’t be able to say anything substantial about it. You need to say something more specific, which is best done in a sentence: “Forbidden love can have terrible consequences.” NOW we’re ready to write or discuss theme.

However, my answer is this: it depends.

It depends on whether we’re talking about universal themes or the theme of a poem, short story, or novel. “Forbidden love can have terrible consequences” is a good theme, but it’s not the ONLY way that people write about love in stories.

Plus, it’s worth considering the way that other organizations use the word theme. CommonLit and Writer’s Edit and Shmoop all use themes that are one word, like “love,” “war,” and “death,” or a phrase at best. Plus, if I have a book of Emily Dickinson poems grouped by theme, you can bet I’ll see a category called “nature.” Emily Dickinson wrote a lot about nature, but she didn’t always say the same thing about nature in every poem. I know that it’s possible to see these as “topics” (a term a lot of teachers use) but if we are being truly descriptive, this is how the word theme is used in lots of places.

Here’s my approach.

I find it helpful to acknowledge the way that a lot of my students will see theme expressed frequently, which is with a single word. However, I tell them that theme is best expressed as a statement, which would be a sentence that the author expresses about a topic. So we can distinguish between what topics the work addresses (love, injuries, friendship) into what the author says about those topics (which would be the theme.)

I find children’s books to be a terrific way to teach theme. It’s helpful to pick one that has a clear purpose in mind. My current favorite is Chopsticks, by Amy Rosenthal. We read the story, discuss the topics that Rosenthal addressed in the story, and then work from there to arrive at themes: what does Rosenthal believe about these topics?

A Visual Guide to Theme

Visual guides help students understand complex topics, and I’ve developed this Visual Guide To Theme to help students understand how theme works. Also included: plenty of teaching tips for helping students understand theme that have worked in my classroom.

I know you’re the kind of teacher that makes their classroom a fun, engaging learning environment. I have a series of lessons done as comics that address various ELA topics like grammar, poetry, editing, and Shakespeare, all of which will make your students glad they came to class that day. All the fun is there for you, and your kids will love studying any of these topics because they’ll get a new comic every day! Please check out my resources and let the learning begin!

Getting Started With Annotation

August 22, 2019 By David Rickert Leave a Comment

Annotation is an important skill for ELA students to master. But where do we start?

When I rent a movie I’m a sucker for the bonus features. I recently watched “Mission Impossible: Fallout and then spent the next hour watching how all the stunts were done. I was amazed to find out that the skydiving scene was real – Tom Cruise actually jumped out of a plane while other skydivers film that scene. When it comes to movies, I’m as interest in how the movies are made as I am the movies themselves, and I’m glad someone came up with the idea of bonus features for movie rentals.

Annotation allows us to access the “bonus features” of things we read. We can enjoy the piece of literature for its own sake, but we can get a richer experience if we take a close look at the story to see how it was made.

But how do we get started with annotation in our classes? For one thing, we need a good idea of how annotation can become a grind for students and how it can potentially make them hate reading, which is counterproductive. But then I consider my class. Maybe I have new students who need a refresher on annotation. Or maybe a there’s a selection of students I suspect has coasted through school without having annotated anything. I need a good strategy to kick it off before I expect them to do it for homework, or before they tackle something longer like a novel.

Below are a few of the first things I do when we talk annotation in class. I remind them that annotators look for answers to the following questions: what do you notice? What words stick out to you? What seems to be important? And then we do one or more of the following strategies.

Model it.

I stumbled upon this method by accident. I was looking for a clean copy of “The Kiss,” a story that we read in class. Unfortunately the only copy I could locate was one I had already annotated for the purposes of teaching it. But then occurred to me that since this was the first story we were going to read, why don’t I just hand them this copy to model what good annotation looks like?

There are other things you can add more complexity to this task. You can have students add their own annotations along with yours, to fill in the “blank spaces” (you could even annotate parts of the story, and leaves some large chunks for them to annotate following your methods.) You can also have them take all of your annotations and classify them according to what annotation “moves” you’re making – predictions, questions, and so on.

If you get real ambitious, annotate a story improperly. Add some false conclusions. Misread passages. Let them annotate to argue with you. Have them point out how your reading of the story isn’t accurate.

(A confession: I know a lot of teachers have good success with a read aloud, but I’ve never done this. For one thing, I’m too nervous to do it with something I’ve very read, and not a good enough actor to pretend I’m reading something I’m familiar with for the first time. If any of you have a strategy for making this work, I’d love to hear it.)

Chunk it.

Annotating an entire story or chapter can be an overwhelming process, and it’s helpful to break a passage into manageable chunks to help students practice with fewer sentences and words.

Take an easy poem and only give students a small piece at a time to work with in increments. I like to use poems that have easy breaks to work with, such as “To A Daughter Leaving Home” (there are breaks after commas at the end of lines) or “The Summer I Was Sixteen” ( which has four quatrains.)

Put each chunk on a slide, or go old school and create a flip book on paper if you wish. Then you work through the poem as a class piece by piece, annotating as you go. You’ll ask the same basic questions: what do you notice? What words stick out to you? What seems to be important? But as you add each piece, ask another question: how does this piece either build on or contradict what’s come before?

Working through a poem this way not only gives students manageable chunks of information to process, but also helps model the type of close examination that annotation requires. We don’t just look at the whole thing when we annotate. We also want to look at individual words, phrases, and sentences to see how they contribute to the whole.

Read it twice.

This is a method I like to use with short stories, especially really short stories that can be read twice in a period. The first time you read the short story you are looking for the basic information: what do you notice? What words stick out to you? What seems to be important?

But after you’ve had time to go through one time, students read the entire story a second time. Now that they aren’t trying to figure out what’s happening next, what do they notice?

Sometimes I’ll assign a second read for homework. Or, if it’s a longer story, I’ll photocopy a page or two that is especially rich and have them work through that instead of the entire story.

Although it’s a medium length story, I’ve always enjoyed using “The Necklace” for double annotating, and “The Use of Force” or “The Birthday Party” with older students (easily read twice in a period)

This method teaches students that rereading is often necessary to truly understand the nuts and bolts of a story. On the first read, you might be simply enjoying the story. And that’s fine. But to truly understand how the story works, you have to read it a second time to see what techniques the author is using.

And be sure to have fun!

Annotation doesn’t always have to be a chore for students. Check out my annotation games to add some fun and variety to your annotating.

If you like these ideas, why not join my email list? I send out great ELA ideas on a regular basis. Or click on the link below to get a free lesson on The Road Not Taken!

Some other annotation posts you might enjoy:

5 Steps to Great Annotations

Why Students Hate Annotating (and How You Can Fix It)

Rethinking Annotation So Students Will Find It Meaningful

2 Ways to Analyze a Passage From Literature

June 18, 2019 By David Rickert 2 Comments

All ELA teachers want to develop their students into good readers. That not only involves building the love of reading but also involves developing critical reading skills in the classroom. We want our students to be able to read critically and analyze a passage, which involves taking a passage apart and seeing how it works. In short, we want students to not only understand what they are reading, but also how the author accomplished their goal through literary devices, syntax, diction, and other skills.Annotation is one way we can get students to analyze the text, but frequently students need a more structured way to analyze a passage. Something that gets them looking differently at a text in ways that annotation doesn’t provide. I have adapted two strategies from the book Writing Analytically by David Rossenwasser and Jill Stephen to get kids interacting with a passage of text in meaningful ways. =

Strategy #1: The Method

This strategy, called “The Method,” is modified from the Analytical Moves section from Rosenwasser and Stephen’s book by adding a few tweaks. With this technique, students look for patterns and repetitions in a passage. Students will need a sheet of paper. Here’s how it works:

Step 1: List the exact repetitions of words that occur in the passage and count them.
Step 2: Make a list of similar words, either words that are synonyms, or words that are closely related.
Step 3: Create a T-chart in which you list binary oppositions found in the text – words that are opposite in meaning or tone.
Step 4: Determine the primary opposition that occurs in the passage, such as good vs. evil, male vs. female, or rich vs. poor.
Step 5: Determine how this opposition is significant to the novel or play.
Step 6: Discuss what the students found, either in small groups or as a class.

A lot of times The Method works well for the opening few paragraphs of a novel, when the setting and themes are established. I’ve done it this way for Their Eyes Were Watching God. It also works really well for passages from Shakespeare, such as the prologue to Romeo and Juliet or Iago’s monologues from Othello. There are plenty of passages from Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak that would work well. However, not every passage will work. You have to look for a passage that has the repetition and binary opposition present. You also don’t want to give students a passage that’s too long – a few paragraphs are best.

Strategy #2: So What?

This strategy helps students see not only what’s important in a passage, but also why it’s important. Students will need a sheet of paper.

Students should divide their paper into three sections. The first section should be labeled “Observations.” The second and third columns should both be labeled “So What?”
The first section is for observations – things that happen in the passage that are important, and are easily proven to be there. This is the basic level of understanding – what happens in the passage that’s significant?
In the next column, students take their observations and answer the question “So What?” Why is this event significant? What are the implications behind what happened?
In the final column, students will take the answer to the first “So What?” and ask “So What?” again. They will try to come to some conclusion about what happened. In the words of Rosenwassen and Stephen: “we look at the evidence and draw a conclusion that is not directly stated by follows from what we see.”
Discuss their findings in small groups or as a whole class.

While this works well for passages that students have encountered before, it also works well for passages that students have not read yet. It’s especially good for passages where there is a specific point the author is making. A good passage for this activity, for example, would be Chapter 2 of The Hate U Give when Starr and Khalil are pulled over by the police. It’s obvious that Angie Thomas wants us to think a certain way about the encounter. The “So What?” exercise gets students thinking about the implications of the event and what conclusions they can draw from it.

Final Thoughts

If you need a quick exit slip that indicates how well your students are doing with thinking critically about a passage, either of these two methods will tell give you a glimpse at how well students can analyze, as well as a general sense of how well they understand the novel or play.

Like any strategy, neither of these exercises are one-and-done. Like with any skill, students will benefit from repeated practice until this level of analysis becomes natural to them. Once we have students analyzing the structure of a passage and the author’s intent, we are developing in them the ability to flourish as skilled readers.

Here are some other blog posts you might enjoy:

Writing Rubrics That Give You Back Your Weekends

Building Better Topic Sentences

Mini Timed Writings: Getting Students to Write More Without More Grading

A Workshop Approach to Essay Planning

Learning should be fun! Check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store for fun resources like the ones you see below.

Annotation Games

October 18, 2018 By David Rickert Leave a Comment

Many students find annotation a chore. They do it for the teacher and not for their own benefit. They claim annotating makes them hate reading.

I understand where they’re coming from. Annotation is difficult. It slows down the reading process. However, we can’t build active readers without it. We want students to interact with the text and make it their own. Annotation does that.

However, we what can do is reward them for their work. Here are some fun games where students use their annotations to earn points.

Padlet Challenge

This challenge involves the Padlet app. I’m not going to get into the basics of Padlet — you can go to their website and get a good explanation of how it works (it’s easy.) But if you’re already 1:1 it’s easy to implement. Students can also use the app on their phones as well. If you don’t have devices in the classroom — or if you lust want to go low tech for the day —you can do it on large sheets of paper with post-its. I like to do the Padlet challenge when we are about halfway through the novel.

Here’s how to do it.

Before class select a list of items that students might have annotated as they read. Or you might have asked them to do certain types of annotations, such as asking questions or making predictions. Either will work.
Assign point values to each item. For instance you might assign 1 point to things that are relatively easy to find or more common, and 2 points to things that aren’t as frequent or take a lot more effort to spot.
Create a slide to project the instructions in front of the room that allows the students to see the point values (or just draw it on the chalkboard.)
During class divide the class into groups of four or five.
One member of the group will create a CANVAS with the Padlet app and share it with the others members of the group AND the teacher. The students title the canvas with the names of the members of your group.
Students accumulate points by adding a PHOTO OF AN ANNOTATED PAGE to the shared canvas. In order to count for points, annotations must meet the following criteria: they must have a part of the passage highlighted or underlined, and they must have a comment that explains why it is significant.
Total the points. The group with the most points wins.

The Padlet Challenge has worked well for me because it rewards those who annotated well in the first place, while allowing those who didn’t to participate as well because they can still create annotations as they play.

Annotation Euchre

A fellow teacher and I developed this years ago and had a lot of fun with it — especially when we dealt the superintendent in when he came to our classroom for a visit.

This one requires a little more setup, and a basic knowledge of euchre and euchre tournaments work is helpful, but not required. Basically in a euchre tournament you don’t play with a partner. You play by yourself, rotating through a number of different players. You keep the points that you win with your current partner and advance to the next game.

Here’s how it works:

Each student needs to have a copy of the book.
Copy the directions below so each student has them:

Rules/Order of Play

For each round, you are partners with the person across from you, just like in regular euchre.

Choose a page (or a chapter — it depends on the length of your book). You’ll want to choose a passage that is especially rich in content and details. This will be your “hand” for all four games in each round.

For each “game” you will be asked to annotate your passage for a specific topic. For instance, you may be asked to find examples of character development or a specific symbol. You will then mark any examples of this in your passage.

For each example in your passage you will get a point along with any points your partner accumulates.

At the end of each round, the winners will move to the next table and the losers will remain. One loser will move to occupy the chair next to their partner from the previous round so that no one plays with the same person twice. If there is a table of two, those players will play together. If there is a table of three, each player will play individually, the players with the highest scores will move on.

The player who accumulates the most points at the end of the game wins.

Here’s a sample scorecard:

Just like in the previous game you’ll need a list of things that students should look for- I suggest around ten. Then you randomly select one for each hand (or don’t make it random – it’s up to you.)
The trick is to keep this moving quickly or you’ll run out of time. One minute per hand is optimal.
Students need to be on the honors system for this one because they could make up their points or change “hands.” But as long as you aren’t assigning a grade for it, the students don’t have much incentive to cheat. I always like to tell them that in high school we are all winners.

Annotation bingo

Screen Shot 2018-10-14 at 5.27.50 PM — Sample Bingo card with page numbers. You can do chapters as well.

This requires you to use a custom bingo card generator in which you can choose your own columns and numbers. They are easy to find if you search for custom bingo cards or you can find one here.

1. You’ll create these cards by replacing BINGO with things you had them look for as they read. Or if you are using a bingo card generator that won’t allow you to change the BINGO, just assign something to each letter. Because you can customize the spaces as well, you can add page numbers or chapters or whatever you’d like. You can do this game at any point in the novel, but it works best when you’ve read at least a third. I suggest using chapters or a small range of pages instead of individual pages because it will make the game go faster. You may want to use a 4X4 grid because it will make each game go faster as well.

2. Then you play the game like regular bingo. If you get one of the ball cages you’ll be my idol, but it’s easier to write the BINGO categories on small sheets, the squares on the other, and run it that way. (There’s probably a bingo app you could use as well.)

3. Again, you’ll want to keep the game moving or it can drag. Give students enough to locate each item, but that’s it.

4. In order to prove that they have BINGO, they have to show their annotations on the page.

Learning should be fun! Check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store for fun resources like the ones you see below.

The What, How, and Why of Close Reading

September 24, 2018 By David Rickert 1 Comment

I begin class by with a short story. An extremely short story, in fact —it’s called “The Birthday Party” and it’s only three paragraphs long. Reading it with a class is an opportunity to see what my students do when they are asked to do a close read. We’ve trained them well in English classes over the past few years — they grab a pencil or pen because they are ready to annotate.

Close reading is a valuable skill, but how can we teach it so it becomes meaningful work? What are the strategies we can give all readers so that they will be successful not just at reading passages on tests, but also while thinking critically about what they read as adults?

I read about a strategy that Brian Sztabnik uses. He asks his students to answer three questions. The following strategy is based on that. Here’s his blog post.

What, How, Why

I break down the task of close reading into three steps. I call it the what, how, and why of close reading. Close reading consists of analyzing these three components:

What do you notice?

How were you made to notice it?

Why are you noticing it?

Here’s how it works.

Step 1: What do you notice?

The first step is What do you notice? When reading a selection I ask students: what do you know to be true? If we don’t know what happens in a passage, we can’t analyze the rest. Then we move on to things that they saw that they had to figure out (in other words, inferences they’ve made.) They know these things to be true as well, but they had to read between the lines.

Step 2: How were you made to notice it?

The second step is How were you made to notice it? This is when we examine the nuts and bolts or the author’s writing. What literary devices does the author use to call your attention to what’s important? If I have an especially adept group, we might look at how syntax and diction call our attention to certain things.

Step 3: Why are you noticing it?

The final step is Why are you noticing it? Why did the author create this piece? What was their goal? What about human nature did they want to illuminate for us, perhaps?

Begin with a picture

I like to start with a picture to get the ball rolling. Adrian Tomine has some wonderful New Yorker covers that are perfect for this task. Here’s the one I use, but there are plenty of others. I project this image on the screen and give them a photocopy of the image to annotate.

At first I don’t give them any direction other than to annotate the image, writing down everything they notice. I want to see what they do when I don’t give them specific guidelines, open to the possibilities of whatever the picture reveals to them.

After five minutes of annotating we proceed to step one: I ask them to tell me what they know to be true. We cover the basics of the image: there’s a man and a woman reading the same book. They are looking at each other. They are riding a subway. There’s a guy listening to music. It doesn’t take long to get all the basics.

We then move on to step two: I ask them how they were made to notice it. I begin by asking them what the focus of the image is. They all know it’s the man and the woman reading the same book. I ask them how they were made to see that. Eventually some details of the craftsmanship of the image emerges. The books are both white (and they are the only white objects in the picture). The faces of the man and the women are the only faces visible. They are framed by the windows of the subway cars.

I then tell them the title of the picture (“Missed Connections”) and then move on to step three. I ask them why the author made this image. What’s the story the artist is telling? I resist giving them my interpretation, because I’m much more interested in what they have to say at this point (I have my own version of the story, but over time I’ve heard lots of plausible theories, so I’m not sure mine is the correct one anymore.)

Moving on to a short story

After we’ve looked at the image I hand out Katherine Brush’s short story “The Birthday Party” which you can find online (but any one page short story will do.) We repeat the process. The students annotate the story, just seeing what they notice.

I then ask the same question — What do you know to be true? Brush’s straightforward prose makes the details easy to pick out. Then we move on to what they have to figure out, such as: what kind of restaurant is it? What else do you have to figure out because of the point of view? We don’t really know why the man is upset about the birthday cake, or any of their backstory for that matter. We just have to make guesses based on what the narrator observes. But at this point we are thinking about the how — the elements that Brush includes to tell us what’s going on between them.

Finally, I ask them why this story was written. There doesn’t seem to be a moral here, so I lead them to think about what the author might be saying about particular types of people. Many of them get to “some people don’t like to be surprised” and I often throw out that perhaps the story is about how we never really know what goes on behind the scenes in a relationship we observe from afar.

Final Steps

At this point I’m ready to turn them loose on a longer short story. My favorite story to start of the year is “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant because there are several opportunities to isolate a few paragraphs to look closely at what’s going on.

And other good follow up strategy is to give them a piece of non-fiction, such as an editorial from a newspaper. The method is the same: What is the author writing about? How does the author make his case? Why is he writing about it?

Final Thoughts

We want our students to leave our classroom with the skills necessary to be good readers and thinkers. Close reading gives them the strategies they need to reliably perform this skill in a variety of settings.

Learning should be fun! Check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store for fun resources like the ones you see below.