Two New Digital Close-Reading Activities
Both using a #TQE template that you can use in your own classroom, if you want!
Anyone who has been reading posts here on The Broken Copier is probably well-acquainted by now with Marisa Thompson’s #TQE system that I began using last year—and that I have been recommending to everyone I talk to after seeing the impact it made in our room. After implementing this system of discussion and inquiry, students self-rated our classroom community at the end of the year on the value of curiosity at the highest levels I’ve had in my career, and the quality of questions and exploration made noticeable leaps across all my classes from wire-to-wire.
Simply put, it changed the learning experience in our classroom—which is why I keep talking about it as much as I do.
This is also why this past summer I came up with a TQE template to pair with the “old school” annotation work students did last year with their highlighters and hard copies of texts. Yes, we still do it the “old school” way most of the time, but this year when we’ve pivoted digitally we have been able to keep a much firmer grasp on TQE (Thoughts, Questions, Epiphanies) as a tool.
Before I share two specific types of “pivoting” we’ve done using this template, here are some overarching tools you might find helpful:
Curious about #TQE overall as a system? Here’s the original explainer from Marisa Thompson via Cult of Pedagogy (Seriously, if you haven’t read this, stop reading now and go read that first!)
Digital Pivot #1: Jigsawing Excerpts from a Reading
One of the trickiest balances in any classroom is how to create space for individual deep-thinking alongside meaningful collaboration—especially given how every student arrives at both in their own way.
This past week, though, I think I found one of the best “balances” I’ve seen in awhile after moving through a post-read process using the digital TQE tool as the foundation for each step of the activity:
STEP 1: for set-up, I selected four short excerpts from a reading students had just completed from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and created “forced copy” links on our course page for each student to access based on their desk label color:
STEP 2: referring to this completed sample from a page we had already worked through as a class, students completed the first-half of the document independently—highlighting four annotations and then explaining them either as a “Thought” or a “Question” with boxes on the right (you can see one student sample of this above).
STEP 3: this is where it gets fun! Students moved with their computers to the four corners of the room based (each labeled with a corresponding color) to debrief their annotations collectively and discuss why their excerpt was important to the text as a whole. (Note: in my largest class, they just went into smaller groups of 2-3 with similar desk colors.)
STEP 4: maybe my favorite part? The pivoting back to independent work, with students transferring their own findings and conversations to the epiphany section at the bottom. Furious keyboard clicks and clacks filled an otherwise-silent room, with all that thinking ending up in thoughtful written reflections like this one:
All in all, this meant that in only 20-25 minutes students had moved through a full close-read process, including meaningful conversations with peers, and walked away with a substantive tool that they can lean on going forward in this unit.
Quite a pivot, right?
(Oh, and on my end as a teacher? I am collecting the best versions of these TQE close-reads for each excerpt and assembling a “LutherNotes”—partially kidding—with student-created annotations for numerous moments in the book. Potentially a very cool, very authentic tool to have in the classroom for years to come!)
Digital Pivot #2: Analyzing Pages from a Choice-Read Book
As much as I loved the previous activity, it is pretty much in lockstep with what I had originally designed the tool for. That’s a good thing!
However, perhaps what really sold me on this template was how it could work just as well in an entirely different classroom context: supporting sophomores with their personal-choice reading.
Midway through their reading of a book of their choosing, students were asked to make a copy of this template with minor adjustments: 1) the bottom section asked specifically for context as well as a key line evaluation and 2) where the excerpt had been previously was now blank space.
That blank space? Students would fill it by taking a picture of a key page of their own choosing.
So there we were as a class, with students holding books up to computers or, in some cases, computers up to books—angling for the perfect snapshot of their self-selected key page. Just like in the previous activity, the entire classroom was invested in this analysis in a novel way (see what I did there?), with lots of friendly conversation about how to capture the perfect image.
From there came their own independent TQE analysis and reflection, and some really eye-opening “catches” from students that gave me entirely new vantage points into these books, including incredible evaluations such as this one:
And once again, as a teacher this was not a lot of work to set-up, as it only took a few minor tweaks to that original template. And this time I didn’t even have to find the text—the students took care of that part!
Why I’m Sold On Pivots Like These Going Forward
I think I’ve gone on long enough for one post about TQE itself, so allow me to step back and explain more broadly why I’m so invested in pivots like these between collaborative work and deeper independent analysis (a topic I recently wrote about for Edutopia, too, sharing some other strategies, if you’re interested).
Reflecting on my career, too often it feels like the classroom has been limited to an either/or situation when it comes to what type of learning experience takes place in a given lesson: 1) do you prioritize student-driven, community-building collaboration or 2) do you create the structures, scaffolds, and time for individual work to really thrive?
With these pivots, though? That either/or becomes a both/and.
High-quality collaboration and high-quality independent analysis not just both taking place but doing so in a way in which one builds off the other, and the entire classroom as a result becoming better individually and collectively.
Tools like the ones I’ve shared in this post have helped make this both/and a reality, and as Jim and I shared on the latest podcast episode, that’s why we started The Broken Copier in the first place. The goal was to create a place to share ideas and strategies that worked in our classroom with as many other classrooms as we can—and that goal continues to be the only thing we are focused on going forward with this project.
So I wanted to end this post by thanking once more all those who continue to read and listen, and especially those who have helped others find The Broken Copier by sharing within your own networks! Please keep doing so when you’re willing, and also know that we are always open to feedback and new ideas/topics that you’d be interested in us prioritizing.
This is the time of year when the classroom can feel particularly confining, after all, so to be able to lean into a community of teachers and other educators like this one?
Quite a thing, indeed.
I just came across this. And I am totally using it! Love, love, love.
Thank you!