Book excerpt: Close-reading strategies help students develop the critical-thinking skills essential for the rest of their lives. Close Reading in the Secondary Classroom offers high school and middle school educators extensive guidance on how to introduce close reading to students and help them improve their reading comprehension skills and critical thinking. Learn how to select close-reading examples and passages, elicit deeper question formation, facilitate positive classroom discussion, and assess your students' reading comprehension and literacy progress. Understand the importance of close reading, prereading, and post-reading activities. Learn how to choose appropriate literary or informational texts for close reading. Pass on tools necessary for literary analysis and annotating text. Develop thought-provoking questions and discussion that deepen text analysis and reading comprehension. Assess students' critical and creative thinking skills. Contents: Introduction Chapter 1: Research and Theory Chapter 2: Prereading Chapter 3: Reading Twice and Annotating Chapter 4: Generating Questions and Reading Analytically Chapter 5: Discussing as a Class or Analyzing Individually, and Using Processing Activities Chapter 6: Planning and Assessing Close Reading Epilogue Appendix A: Answers to Comprehension Questions Appendix B: Extended Examples of Close Reading