Close reading as an intervention for struggling middle school readers

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2014). Close reading as an intervention for struggling middle school readers. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 57(5), 367-376.


“Close reading” has become a buzzword in literacy education today, and is linked to the purportedly more “rigorous” kind of reading that the Common Core State Standards seem to call for. Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey are becoming known for their conception of close reading, and in fact they have a new book, Rigorous Reading (published in fall, 2013 by Corwin Literacy), which will probably be of interest to literacy educators as we try to rethink literacy instruction in light of the Common Core State Standards.

This article stood out for me because of its helpful descriptions of what “close reading” actually looks like with students, at least as Fisher and Frey conceptualize it. We get to see specific details of how the approach was implemented with seventh and eighth grade students who scored in the lower 40% of their peers on reading tests, and who were reading about two years below grade level as measured by typical kinds of assessments. The approach used here was implemented as part of an after-school program, and consisted of repeated readings of short grade level texts, small group and large group discussions of these texts that was aimed at higher levels of comprehension and that required students to cite evidence from the text, and periods of independent reading of student-chosen texts while teachers implemented short small-group sessions that targeted specific student needs. Every step of the process was closely monitored and scaffolded.

The results, though certainly not miraculous, were promising. Although the students in Fisher and Frey’s program were not all reading on grade level by the end of the year of the study, they appear to have made more progress on literacy skill outcomes than the control group, a similar group of struggling readers, made while participating in the district’s “business as usual” after-school program. An interesting finding was that the students in Fisher and Frey’s group had better attendance than the control group in the after-school program (which was a voluntary program, though it may not have been the students’ choice to be there). Could it be that support, success, and high expectations that honor students as readers and thinkers, rather than looking down on them, could be a motivating factor?

I’ve been pondering other reasons why Fisher and Frey’s program seems to have worked for these students. Both experimental and control groups got approximately the same amount of time in their respective after-school interventions, but the quality of the intervention seems to have made the difference. I was struck by the careful scaffolding the experimental program provided, and by its structure and purposefulness. I have been worried about the artificiality of reading only short texts, though that may appeal to teachers because it fits into a typical class time allotment and it resembles the kinds of tasks students are now being asked to perform on standardized tests. I’ve also worried that concentrating too much on these short texts, and annotating and note taking and Post-it sticking those texts to death will kill any interest some of these students may have in reading. Close reading may be one good skill to have, but will we lose reading just for the joy of it?

While I still have some of these fears about this and other close reading approaches, I do admire the careful scaffolding I see here, and the thoughtful structuring. The goal seems to be to help students see themselves as successful readers, and I am all for that. Fisher and Frey do include a component of individual, self-chosen reading as an essential part of each day’s instruction, even though it doesn’t seem to be the central instructional piece here. I’d like to see that component developed more.

After reading the article, I was definitely curious to see more of Fisher and Frey’s approach. Fisher and Frey have a YouTube channel, listed in one of article’s sidebars, which I visited and found informative and interesting. There are actual classroom videos showing how close reading looks with various ages of students. The videos, of course, show ideal examples with skilled teachers and mostly well-behaved, seemingly engaged students. While some of that may be due to the qualities of the approach, the videos may be at least somewhat idealized. Still, watching them got me energized to try close reading with my preservice teacher candidates, and see what they think about trying it with the children in their field experience classrooms. I’ve already ordered Fisher and Frey’s book, and intend to follow their future work closely,