Webinar: Implementing the CCSS—Comprehension, Close Reading, and the Common Core with P. David Pearson
In this webinar, Pearson draws upon research, best practices, and common sense to bring some perspective to the current runaway policy train called close reading, which is rapidly turning classroom discussions of literature and informational texts into a low-level interrogation of literally stated facts. In the current context, prior knowledge has become an outcast, and we have gravitated toward a narrow definition of what it means to ask and answer a text-based question.
Pearson offers a different vision of close reading, one that honors the text as a key evidentiary source but insists that teachers and students examine it thoroughly through three sets of complementary tasks. These tasks are more closely aligned to the Common Core itself, and can be described as literal, inferential, and critical. Pearson argues that these perspectives, derived from the current National Assessment of Educational Progress framework, will: (1) offer a complete, balanced, and conceptually rich approach to close reading; (2) help us redefine what it means for a question to be text-dependent; and (3) help students read texts in a way that does what the Common Core is supposed to do—enhance knowledge and insight about the world in which we live.
