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Home > Pre-AP > Workshops > Pre-AP: Strategies in English -- Beyond Acronyms: Inquiry‑Based Close Reading
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Pre-AP: Strategies in English -- Beyond Acronyms: Inquiry‑Based Close Reading
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| | This one-day workshop is designed to help middle and early high school teachers facilitate inquiry-based practices through close reading in their classrooms. Questioning strategies are used to promote critical thinking, starting at the introductory level. The workshop teaches participants classroom strategies that allow students to ask and generate questions, develop the ability to actively engage with any text, and analyze and document their own thinking while reading. Topics addressed include close reading questioning, critical thinking question stems, dialectical journaling, analytical writing, and holistic assessment.
There are four basic premises behind the inquiry-based critical thinking philosophy:
- All students can be taught to inquire and think critically
- Good thinking is the result of asking good questions
- Students will develop critical thinking habits when they are part of a coordinated effort depending on inquiry-based knowledge construction
- The ability to think critically is the foundation upon which to build a student's academic success
General Themes
- Define close reading, examine different modes of learning, and explore ideas for writing and holistic scoring
- Provide students with strategies for responding to and generating questions
- Suggest specific strategies teachers can incorporate into daily lessons using resources they currently have
- Provide opportunities for teachers to work with many activities they may modify to use with students in the classroom
- Present Pre-AP strategies that will lay the foundation for student success in rigorous course work
- Explore opportunities to use questioning in writing
The workshop conforms to:
The workshop provides:
- Substantial content background for teachers
- Activities for students across grade levels
- Activities meant to illustrate good pedagogy (various instructional approaches, including cooperative learning)
- Explorations with discussion questions
- Opportunities for reflection
- Connections between one activity and another
Agenda
Section 1: Inquiry-Based Close Reading and Critical Thinking
This section defines close reading and examines modes of learning. Teachers are asked to consider how they currently teach close reading and what attributes most strong readers seem to have.
Section 2: Close Reading and Questioning
TTeachers will examine learning and questions aligned with each mode of learning. They will read an excerpt of a novel and use a strategy that begins to develop close reading awareness and skills.
Break
Section 3: Guided Critical Thinking Question Stems
This section builds upon the previous two. Teachers have set the foundation for close reading in a critical thinking context. Now teachers use question stems that cause readers to build an interactive relationship with text. In addition, this section starts showing readers how to develop metacognitive awareness of how they understand text.
Lunch
Section 4: Dialectical Journaling
All strategies presented in previous sections have laid the groundwork for dialectical journaling in a close reading context. Here participants use the thinking skills presented in the other sections to thoroughly interact with text and to inquire using their own metacognitive awareness. This awareness of self-interaction with text is the heart of close reading.
Section 5: Poetry Analysis
All strategies come together in an analysis of a short poem that can lead to a full analytical writing piece.
Section 6: Analytical Writing
An outline is presented for use with any type of analytical writing.
Break
Section 7: Holistic Assessment
Teachers will consider how to assess student performance when engaging in the strategies presented.
Section 8: Reflection and Action Plan
Author
Elizabeth Austin is a middle school assistant principal. She has taught a variety of grade levels over the past 14 years, including sixth, fourth, and first. She has led a district-wide English Vertical Team for four years, served as English Department chair, and as a College Board workshop leader has facilitated a wide variety of Pre-AP workshops and contributed to writing and revising several workshops. She has been a national leader trainer for College Board for four years. She served as the first middle school representative on the College Board steering committee for the AP Annual Conference (formerly called the AP National Conference) for two years and presented a variety of workshops in the Western region, nationwide, and internationally, including the AP National Conferences in Los Angeles and Orlando, Florida.
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