Overview
Developing essential comprehensive skills, Complete Close Reading is the first book in a course for New Zealand junior secondary students to help develop and practice the vitally important skills of reading with comprehension and responding to written texts. Each of the 34 units is divided into five sections and the questions are designed to help students respond to texts on many levels. The flexibility of the course means it can be used in class and/or for homework and revision, and text type, purpose, structure and feature of each unit is clearly defined. The book also models a wide range of text types, including narratives, recounts, letters, film and book reviews, historical reports, advertisements, cartoons and poetry.
1. The Deputy Principal - Narrative: Crossfire
2. To Castle Dracula - Journal or diary: Dracula
3. School Camp - Recount: Camp Sorcher
4. Job Hunting - Business letter: I wish to apply
5. 'Prisoner' to 'prize' - Dictionary: Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary
6. Star cross'd lovers - Script: Prologue from Romeo and Juliet
7. In the science lab - Procedure: Experiment 6.1
8. Light and mirrors - Explanation: Mirror, mirror on the wall
9. Out in space - Narrative: Rocket Ship Galileo
10. It's a 'bad' thing - Thesaurus excerpt: Oxford Australian Student's Thesaurus
11. Which book? - Book review: The Age Summer Book Guide
12. At the truck stop - Description: A Bridge to Wiseman's Cove
13. Stand Clear - Poem: Death of a Tree
14. Knights on horseback - Historical report: Becoming a knight
15. Sailing the world: Map - Jesse's voyage
16. Graphic information - Pictograph: Transportation and the atmosphere
17. Acid rain - Explanation - Geography: Kicking the coal habit
18. Harry's family - Narrative: The mirror of Erised
19. Promises, promises - Advertisement: Thursday Plantation acne treatment products
20. Energy and the world - Argument: The quest for clean energy
21. Heads you win - Procedure/instructions: Two-up
22. Four-legged friends - Discussion: Animal rights
23. Read all about it - Cartoon: Shellas
24. Chocaholics - Newspaper article: Chocs away as Belgians toast worldwide fame
25. Pop psychology - Magazine article: The true you
26. Working all day - Timetable: School timetable
27. Going it alone - Narrative: Lionheart
28. Get Careers - Interview: Bang on
29. Rating the movies - Response: Rabbit Proof Fence
30. From the director - Recount: 'Phillip Noyce - Rabbit Proof Fence director'
31. An unhappy customer - Letter of complaint: Jetsons Scooter Company
32. Tickle the taste buds - Menu: Round-the-world dinner party
33. Cooking for friends - Instructions: Fried rice
34. The root of evil! - Speech
Hidden depths – provides creative, critical or high-order thinking questions. Students will need to respond to this section as individuals and be prepared to justify their response
Extend yourself - these are more open-ended questions that provide a range of opportunities for students to respond to the text at a deeper level by writing, viewing, listening and speaking
On the surface – basic literal questions that students should be able to find the answers to clearly written in the text
Discoveries – questions about the purpose, structure and features of the text. Students will need to focus on the intended audience, the language and the way the text hasbeen constructed.
Delivering more deeply – provides inferential or interpretative questions. Students will have to use their own knowledge and thinking, as well as information from the text to answer questions in this section.