Table of Contents
Overview
Part I, The Questions We Pondered, shares our thinking about some critical topics of today. Because our thinking about these topics mostly took the form of questions we asked of one another, we decided to present this section as a series of questions and our answers. Our answers, tentative as they are, may help you understand the thinking that guided our development of the Notice and Note Signposts. Also in Part I you’ll see sections labeled “What you might wonder about.” These are additional questions we thought you and others in your own learning community might want to discuss. See these questions as starting points for rich conversations about literacy education in your own classroom and your own school.
Part II, The Signposts We Found, explains the Notice and Note Signposts, the role of generalizable language, and the anchor question that accompanies each signpost.
Part III, The Lessons We Teach, provides model lessons for teaching the Signposts. This is our language and we don’t expect it to work for you or your students until you’ve put it in your own words, but it will give you a start, a place to begin.
We hope that Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading will help students come to enjoy the pleasures of reading attentively and responsively. They will need you to put the right books in their hands, books in which they can get lost and books in which they can find themselves. And they’ll need you, and other teachers like you, to invite them into the conversations that will transform them into the close and thoughtful readers whose entire lives will be enriched by books.
Table of Contents
Part I: The Questions We Pondered
1. Is reading still reading?
2. And what is the role of fiction?
3. Where does rigor fit in with this discussion of reading?
4. What do we mean by intellectual communities?
5. What is the role of talk in creating intellectual communities?
6. Do text-dependent questions foster engagement?
7. What is “Close Reading?”
8. To talk about novels do we all need to be reading the same book?
9. As I’m choosing novels, don’t the CCSS say novels must be harder, be more complex?
10. And one final question: Are we creating lifetime learners?
Part II: The Signposts We Found
1. The Notice and Note Signposts
2. Defining the Notice and Note Signposts
3. The Anchor Question for each Signpost
4. The Role of Generalizable Language in Teaching these Lessons
5. The Generalizable Language We Use for Each Signpost
6. Explaining the Signposts to Students
7. Assessment and the Notice and Note Signposts
8. Some Questions You Might Have
Part III The Lessons We Teach
1. Contrasts and Contradictions
2. The Aha Moment
3. Tough Questions
4. Words of the Wiser
5. Again and Again
6. Memory Moment
Appendix
1. Student Survey on Discussions
2. Rigor and Talk Checklist
3. Huswifery
4. Text complexity worksheet
5. Notice and Note Bookmark
6. Texts for teaching the Notice and Note Lessons