Introduction
Langston Hughes is a canonized name in the poetry curriculum across age levels and classrooms across the United States. This unit focuses on his poetry, short stories, and autobiographical excerpts, as a way to engage students fully in close reading analysis and to encourage a mindset of curiosity as they read.
In a world where our students, especially teens, are so entranced by their cellular phones, in particular social media and gaming, reading has fallen to the wayside. It is less common for me to find avid readers in my classroom, and more challenging to engage the group in class texts and novels. The challenge then is to get reluctant readers and those with little practice, not just reading, but analytically engaging with texts.
In our ELA classrooms across the country, there is an emphasis on close reading analysis. According to the Common Core, close reading analysis is, “engaging with a text of sufficient complexity directly ... encouraging students to read and reread deliberately. Directing student attention on the text itself … to reflect on the meanings of individual words and sentences; the order in which sentences unfold; and the development of ideas throughout the text, which ultimately leads students to arrive at an understanding of the text as a whole.”(1) From this methodical rereading, students interact with the craft, structure, and syntax of literary texts, adding their meaning through logical inferences and connotations, ultimately gaining a deeper understanding of the meaning.
One flaw in the definition of close reading is the “reread deliberately” bit. For the better part of ten years, I have tried to introduce close reading to my students, hoping that like myself, they would revel in the composition of language and the tango between author and audience that make these words come to life. The moment I introduce the concept, however, it is lost in their prior understanding of “marking the text,” an annotation system taught differently by each teacher and too often relying on superficial “marks” to demonstrate what you've read. These marks include things like:
?- add a question mark to areas that are confusing or write your question
!- add an exclamation mark to something that surprised you
underline - important information found in the text
TT, TW, TS- write a connection you made with the text
(circle)- draw a circle around unfamiliar words
The result is that “reading deliberately” becomes a task list where students underline and add marks superficially to the text, seldom engaging beyond mark-making, and not reaching further meaning out of their marks.
I have tried to push past this by requiring them to write their thoughts about each mark in the margin. If they added a ‘?” requiring them to write the question out and find an answer. If they marked a connection, explaining how the connection helps them understand the text. If they underlined, explaining the significance they found.
While we try as a campus to emphasize a growth mindset, the students' use of marking the text seems to fit with the way they engage overall with schoolwork, a more tactical checklist, and get it done approach. Yet this approach adds an extra challenge to their learning and my teaching. By working for the credit, students are more often thinking about points earned rather than critically thinking about the presented material.
In his book, Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone) Sam Wineburg finds another flaw in the close reading definition and rejects this strategy when it comes to historical literature. While close reading may focus all students, regardless of background knowledge on the text itself, Wineburg says that “...applied to history, strictures against background knowledge do the opposite of leveling the playing field. Without context, this ‘playing field’ turns into a potholed lot that sends a shot on goal sailing in an erratic, bizarre trajectory.”(2) This is to say, that without grounding a historical text in the context of its time, its interpretation is then open to a classroom of 30 different students with varying degrees of background and an even greater variety of interpretations based on their lenses. Especially when over time the meanings of some keywords and phrases have evolved.
Instead, Wineburg implores that we think like historians, “To a historian critical thinking isn’t just collecting facts to pass judgment. It’s about determining what questions to ask to generate new knowledge.”(3) These questions, according to Wineburg, would begin with examining the source, the period, and adjacent historical context. This would push close reading away from the microscopic focus of the text into curiosity about the world and time in which the text was created.
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