PHILIPPINE NORMAL UNIVERSITY

National Center for Teacher Education

Institute of Teaching and Learning

Taft Avenue, Manila

Effectiveness of Close

Reading Strategy in

teaching Comfort Woman

and Gays in Grade 6 –

Vygotsky

Submitted to:

Prof. Jaime Escobia

Submitted by:

Nicole R. Jose
Ellaine Y. Lagundino
Shaina Francheska Sengco
Bachelor in Social Science Education with Certificate in Teaching Elementary
 Chapter I
The Problem and It’s Background

Introduction

Close Reading is defined by Burke in his article “A Close Look at Close

Reading” as “a thoughtful, critical analysis of a text that focuses on

significant details or patterns in order to develop a deep, precise

understanding of the text’s form, craft, meanings, etc.” This strategy

involves the investigation of short texts and how its meaning is shaped by

context (Brown and Kappes, 2012).

Reading is a necessary activity done when studying History. In order

to understand a certain event in the History, one must read different

accounts to compare and contrast it. On the other hand, teaching History

is a hard task for many people but understanding it is harder for the

students. That is why teaching strategies are important when teaching

History, especially if the topic is about the issues that happened in the past.

One of the most important issue in the history of Philippines is about gender.

Women in the past were discriminated because of the sex they were born

with; other gender, specifically Gays, were highly discriminated, due to lack

of social understanding and equal rights., they were seen in early Philippine

society as a disgrace in the family and a sickness in morality. All genders

that exceeds the moral boundaries of Philippine Catholicism are deemed

to be taboo.

In our today’s society, social media has a great effect to the mindset

of the new generation, especially on the topic about rape. There are cases

in social media wherein the victims were blamed for their choice of clothes

to wear which became a “consent” to the rapist to act.

 Close reading strategy allows the readers to create their own

meaning of the text based on their understanding, thus the researchers

chose this strategy to teach the topic of comfort women along with the

other genders in the Grade 6 – Vygotsky in Philippine Normal University –

Institute of Teaching and Learning

Conceptual Framework

In order to employ the conceptual framework illustrated for the

assessment of close reading strategy in teaching comfort women and gays,

it is necessary to select an elementary school, particularly the Institute of

Teaching and Learning, since the researchers are practice teachers in the

mentioned school. Teaching the particular topic about the comfort women

and gays with the use of close reading, students will further explore and

discover the meaning of the text that will be provided to them by the

researchers, should allow them to intensify their knowledge regarding the

gender issues that is happening in the society today

Furthermore, close reading strategy uses a text dependent questions

which has four phases: Literal Level, Structural Level, Inferential Level,

Action-Oriented Level. The four phases question served as the model of

close reading strategy used by the researchers in teaching comfort women

and gays during the Japanese Colonial Period.

 Comfort Women and Gay during
Japanese Colonial Period

Close Reading Strategy

Four Phases of
Questioning

Literal Level

Structural Level

Inferential Level

Action-Oriented Level

Statement of the Problem and Research Question

The main focus of this study was the close reading strategy used by

the researchers in teaching the Grade 6 students about the Comfort

Women and Gays during the Japanese Colonial Period. This qualitative

study aimed to assess the effectiveness of close reading strategy in

teaching the Comfort Women and Gays during the Japanese Colonial

Period in Grade 6 students.

 Specifically, it intended to answer the following research questions

1. What is Close Reading Strategy?

1.1. Model of Close Reading Strategy

1.2. Materials

2. How effective is the close reading strategy in teaching the

Comfort Women and Gays in Grade 6 students?

Significance of the Study

The findings of this paper gave an assessment to the close reading

strategy used in teaching the topic of comfort women and gays in Grade

6 students. The research is relevant to the present times because it allowed

the students to explore and discover the true meaning of the texts they

have read and opened their minds to the issues of rape and other

discrimination against women and other gender.

It is important to know and assess this certain strategy used in

teaching the Comfort Women and Gays, because the academe needs to

know how teaching this topic works and in order to conduct seminars that

can contribute to the improvement of this strategy. The main beneficiary of

this study is the society, because people will be able to understand that the

issues faced by our women in todays’ society would not define who they

are and their dignities as person. It is highly relevant because many people

nowadays blame the victims of rape and sexual harassment based on the

clothes wear by the victims.

Through this study, the students will have a deeper understanding of

the other reason of the gender discrimination during the Japanese Colonial

Period and will discover its connection to the issues our society is facing

today.
 Chapter II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

This chapter covers the literature reviews about the Close Reading

Strategy that will be used in teaching young learners’ character

development and empathy and self-reflections on topics with regards to

gender sensitivity. This chapter also includes the effects of reading literary

works that builds the moral character of children and makes the learners

have deep understanding on current societal issues.

Before even deepening our knowledge about what Close Reading

is and what are the ways of using this strategy in a classroom setting. One

might ask if what is the connection of reading on self-reflection and

character development of a person.

Reading is basically associated with literature; and works of scholars

follows that, literature or literary works have effects on empathy of the

readers. Take for example the study done by Marlowe & Maycock 2001

and Geiger 1975; where there was a positive change on the attitude of the

readers who have read literary works about the minority group in Native

America. (Koopman & Hakemulder, 2015)

How is then reading and empathy related? Koopman & Hakemulder,

2015 compared first different types of literary texts and saw that the

narrative stories tend to have stronger effects on empathy than fiction

Literature only have power to affect one’s cognition and empathy

when being read. So, it is a must that a child must be introduced to reading

at a very young age. But literary pieces can only do so much depending

on the reader; the influence and impact of literature is also dependent on

the reader, since reader’s experiences and schema affects the texts and

his or her own knowledge of taking the new information he or she is reading.

Despite this lack of research findings, we are safe to assume that

indeed, reading and literature affects one’s attitude, behavior and

personality.

There are different strategies on how readers should read depending

on their learning style. But on this study, researchers want to focus on a

classroom-based reading strategy where there is individual effort in reading

simultaneous to collective learning and sharing of knowledge inside the

class.

The purpose of close reading is to connect the ideas of new texts to

the other texts and for the reader to use their new information to give their

own opinions. One of its objectives is to connect their new textual

information with their prior experience or background knowledge. This is to

expand the schema of the reader. Next purpose is to “build the necessary

habits of readers when they engage with complex piece of text.” (Fisher

and Frey, 2012)

Educators must have adequate background about close reading to

achieve maximum learning of the students. With an apt knowledge on how

to use the close reading strategy and knowledge about how the learners

behave, act and learn, teachers will be equipped to smoothly facilitate the

learning inside the classroom. Teachers must know that A learner behaves

according to his background knowledge of a certain topic. Background

knowledge, according to the research conducted by the professors in

Illinois, affects the learners’ attention and how he behaves during reading.

Schemata or background knowledge also affects how a learner

remembers and interprets texts. So, if a learner is introduced into a new set

of topics and words, he will process and digest it using his background

knowledge. His reaction towards the topic exposes his background

knowledge on the latter.

A teacher must nevertheless honor the students’ unique reactions

when encountering a peculiar reading, a teacher must nor criticize the

students’ understanding but rather encourage him to express himself freely.

A teacher must only guide him about having total relativism or subjectivity

when dealing on a certain kind of reading. When reading, the only idea of

the literature must be criticized not the persons involved.

Teachers should also encourage their students to put themselves in a

situation according to the readings involved. In that way, they will easily

connect themselves to the story itself.

Elementary teachers are also teaching different habits to their

students which are vital to their reading development. The habits were

recommended by Paul and Elder (2013) and students should be engaged

to this regularly. First is to identify their own purpose of reading the text. There

are readers who read not because they want to but because they are

required to, so as readers we should know our own reason for reading that

text in order to understand it. We must set questions before reading the text.

Second is to know the author’s purpose for writing the text. In reading

History, we must know how to contextualize a text in order to understand

where it’s coming from. Most of the Historical texts were written centuries

ago and these were written under a certain period of time. Next is to

develop their own schema and lastly is to consider the though systems or

the genres of the text.

 Determining another function of close reading as it was defined as a

thoughtful, critical analysis of a text that focuses on significant details or

patterns in order to develop deeper understanding of the text and its

meaning.

In this paper, Close reading was further elaborated by giving

information on how to do close reading activity. According to Burke, the

text that students will read should be appropriate for them it should be a

text that will allow the students to ponder their deep ideas.

“When selecting a text, you need to consider the three components

of text complexity: Qualitative measures, Quantitative measures, and the

Reader and the Task.” (Burke, n.d.). In order to do these, Burke provided

questions to consider when weighing of the complexity of the text.

This paper also provided steps in Close Reading: (1) Key Ideas and

Details; (2) Craft and Structure; (3) Integration of Knowledge and Ideas. This

another model have three-steps to achieve the desired learning. For the

First reading, it focus on key ideas and details; students will be treated as

independent readers and individually or by pair, learners must integrate

their background knowledge to the given text. Learners must basically

know the main idea and the story or topic the author wants to convey. For

the second reading, students must choose a portion of the article and

reread the part to enhance deeper understanding of the text that includes

complex thoughts. The last or third reading is the part where learners must

have an interaction with the text through analysing and synthesizing the

contents of the article.

 By enhancing and contextualizing this strategy, it won’t just promote

the love for reading but with the supervision of the teacher, learners can

actually have a character development among themselves; especially on

sensitive and taboo topics where young people sees rape issues and

gender issues as something humorous.

As to what this research is about, “Close Reading is an instructional

routine in which students critically examine a text, especially through

repeated readings.” (Fisher and Frey, 2012).

The relationship of reading and literature towards building a

character was seen on many researches to have a positive change on the

learner’s behaviour but still it does not mean to be true in all cases and

context since consideration of what kind of literary texts was being read by

the students and what kind of schema a student have in order to entertain

the information from the article he or she was given. This point of deficiency

of this research could be a start to another study in order to create an

instruction that’s gender fair and not just promotes but intensifies gender

sensitivity and knowledge.

 Chapter III

METHODOLOGY

This chapter discusses the methodology applied by the researchers

for the success and completion of this study. The areas described in this

chapter are the research design, research locale, research participants,

and the procedure taken to collect the data.

Research Design

The Design used in this study is Descriptive approach to deeply

understand the concept of teaching comfort women and gays using close

reading strategy when teaching Grade 6 students of ITL. According to Fox

and Bayat (2007), “Descriptive research is aimed at casting light on current

issues or problems through the process of data collection that enables them

to describe the situation more completely than was possible without

employing this method.” As cited by Dudovsky (2016). This study attempts

to know the effectiveness of close reading strategy.

Research Locale

This study was conducted in one selected school in Manila,

specifically Philippine Normal University – Institute of Teaching and Learning.

Research Participants

The participants of this qualitative study were the grade 6 students

from the ITL. The participants’ age ranges from 11 to 12 years old.

The researchers used Purposeful Sampling Technique where in the

research locale conveniently provide participants for the study.

Data Collection Procedure

The researchers observed the class of Grade 6 – Vygotsky in the ITL

from October to November in order to know if they are aware of the

Gender issues in the society. During the demo teaching of the practice

teachers, the topic of comfort women and gays issue in the history was

opened and problems within the class were observed.

The practice teachers used Close Reading as their strategy to allow

the students to explore the topic and later on the topic was further

discussed within the class.

The researchers choose texts from real life experience and prepared

several questions based on the model created by Fisher and Frey on Close

Reading. The questions started on the literal level by asking the students

what is the text all about or what does it say. After asking question in this

level, the researchers proceed to the next level which is the structural level

where in the researchers asked the students question like how does the text

work, what could be the author’s purpose for writing the text, or in what

period was it written.

The answers of the students were processed in this level in order to

contextualize the text they have read. After knowing the structure of the

text, they proceeded to the next level which is the inferential level. In this

level, the students were asked about the meaning of the text they have

read and what does it reflect in our today’s society.

Reading the text, knowing its structure, and finding out its meaning

should not be the end of it so the researchers proceeded to the next level

of question which is the action-oriented. Simply knowing the meaning of

the text wouldn’t justify the close reading strategy and the goal of the study
wouldn’t be achieved, thus the students were asked if the text inspired

them to do something regarding the issue that was present within the text

they have read.

This procedure was taken in order to further develop the

understanding the students regarding the issues faced by different genders

in the society today. They have to understand the experiences of the

victims in order to know the appropriate actions to be taken regarding rape

issues in today’s society.

 Chapter IV

Results and Findings

When we conducted a close reading activity to the young students,

their initial reaction to the text shows excitement and amusement.

Excitement is completely inclined on having a new set of information. (the

information shown to the students are the firsthand accounts of Lola Rosa

and Markova; the two who have openly shared their experiences under

the comfort system of the Japanese) we made sure that the content of our

text is sensitive as possible because we knew that their understanding

about certain details of History is limited by the boundaries of what is

“taboo” in the perception of society. We all knew that the Education

system here in the Philippines are conservative; only allowing chaste

information to be disseminated among the young, that is why excitement

is one of their initial reactions to the text.

While keeping in mind the excitement they felt during the activity, the

amusement, perhaps, pertains to some peculiar sounding details of the

texts (for example, ‘ginahasa si Lola Rosa gamit ang Walis tambo’) some of

them did not even try to hold their giggles and puzzled chatters. That is

good. Because that is the evidence of the absorption of information.

another evidence to be included on the latter is their spontaneous ‘why

and how’ questions, to be answered and sufficed by the teacher, of

course.

It was a two-day topic teaching, but the close reading was done in

less than an hour. So, the desired learning changes was not observed. Since

on the second day of teaching, some students still manifest that what they

are learning is somewhat humorous.

 Chapter V

Conclusion

At the end of the lesson, there are few students who showed a

change in their attitude, but few are as still not showing any sign of empathy

since some are still finding the topic as something to laugh at.

The problems met by the researcher was the lack of time allotted to

the close reading and the lesson for the day. The second is, the trial for close

reading was done once so there is no enough information to conclude

whether it the close reading done affected and changed the perceptions

of the Grade 6 students. The last problem encountered was at a very young

age how should the teacher facilitate learning when the topic was

sensitive.

The teacher’s role on the close reading activity is the ‘strainer’ of

ideas. If a student starts to bombard the teacher of some explicit questions.

It is the educator’s job to paraphrase that question to a more academically

correct way of questioning, in that way, students will not get the wrong idea

about the text.

On the classroom-based reading strategy developed contextually

by the teacher-researcher was not adequate to conclude that this strategy

is applicable to other set of class or students. Although this only suggests

and recommend further study in this aspect.

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