Expository Writing

Close Reading: Project Classroom Makeover

Read the following passage from Cathy Davidsons Project Classroom Makeover
carefully, underlining or highlighting any words or phrases that feel significant.
Review your annotations and markings thoughtfully, and then reread the entire
passage considering your discoveries. Repeat this process as many times as needed.

Crowdsourced thinking is very different from credentialing, or relying

on top-down expertise. If anything, crowdsourcing is suspicious of
expertise, because the more expert we are, the more likely we are to
be limited in what we even conceive to be the problem, let alone the
answer. While formal education typically teaches hierarchies of whats
worth paying attention to, crowdsourcing works differently, in that it
assumes that no one of us individually is smarter than all of us
collectively. No matter how expert we are, no matter how brilliant, we
can improve, we can learn, by sharing insights and working together
collectively (Davidson 51).
Things to do/consider:
1. List the most confusing words in the passage. Look up each word
in your dictionary and reconsider its contextual implications
within the passage.

2. Underline the most confusing sentence. Write 6-10 observations

about this sentence in your notebook or on a separate sheet of
paper.
3. How does the first sentence relate to the last sentence?

4. Now, offer a close reading of your own. What words are

important and why? How does this passage work, and why is it
important?