Close Reading With Wonders

Aloha! It's Nicole from Teaching With Style!

The entire State of Hawaii adopted the McGraw-Hill Reading Wonders basal program this year.  I'm now waist deep trying to figure out whole group, small group, technology, and how this all relates to the Common Core.

I recently read this article 5 Things Every Teacher Should Be Doing to Meet the Common Core State Standards.

The article outlines these 5 practices as the biggest shifts in teaching CCSS:

1. Lead high-level, text-based discussions
2. Focus on process, not just content
3. Create assignments for real audiences and real purposes
4. Teach argument, not persuasion
5. Increase text complexity

A lot of these shifts can be taught using a close reading technique.  However, it seems that everyone has different ideas about what close reading means - and that's ok! To me, close reading is reading the text more than once for different purposes each time.  The Wonders program outlines a close reading structure with their leveled readers, which are Lexiled for text-complexity.  With each step, have the children re-read the story.

To better facilitate the first step, I taught my students how to annotate with post its.  I made them bookmarks to write their ideas on, then they flag the correct part of the book with a post-it.  

Here is a freebie for you to try it out! 

Click the image to download! 

If you are teaching Wonders, as well, I have some units for sale in my store to help you implement the program!