Spark bird, noun
A species that triggers a lifelong passion for birding

It all started with a yellow bird: the American Goldfinch. After seeing a steady stream of Northern Cardinals flit in and out of my backyard for the last couple years, it was exciting to see a bird this vibrant. Within a couple weeks, I put up some new bird feeders, and even got a new pair of binoculars for my birthday.

Although I could wax poetic on the weirdest bird I’ve seen or the birds that elude me, this isn’t exactly that kind of forum. Instead, I want to reflect on how birdwatching has unexpectedly strengthened my understanding of teaching—especially the art of close reading. Because, as it turns out, the skillset of a birder and that of a close reader have a lot in common.

Imagine with me

I live just outside of Chicago, which is part of the Mississippi Flyway, one of four major migratory routes birds naturally take between warmer southern climates and cooler northern ones. During peak migration in the Spring, over 40 million birds will pass through Chicagoland. 

You know what? Let’s go birding together right now (in our imaginations). Picture a perfect, spring afternoon at my favorite spot: the Riverside Lawn River Trail. It’s just across the river from the Riverside Library, with a walking path that cuts through the middle of a field about an acre wide. We’ll stop in the middle and just pause.

As we’re stopped here, we have the opportunity to see not only the birds that nest year-round by the river, but also those that only come here for the breeding season and even birds just passing through in their path further north. My first time in this field, it wasn’t until I paused to slow down that I realized the sheer number of birds I was hearing and seeing.

The Skillset of a Birder

As we stand in the field, there are a few key skills that we’ll use to shift from “strangers in a field” to “birdwatchers:”

• Be still. Take a moment to just slow down, and let your body relax.
• Listen closely. As your body slows down, it might feel too quiet or silent, but soon, you’ll start to hear calls and songs around you.
• Look around. You’ll start to see movement in the tall grass, and new colors and shapes distinguish themselves on the branches.

Now, these skills take practice–so, it’s going to take more than one try to get the hang of it. Birders don’t become experts overnight. But as we slow down, and take the time to be intentional, patient, and observant of our surroundings, we begin to hear and see new things.

Becoming a Classroom Birder

I’ve been teaching in our first-year writing program for about 8 years now. In that time, I’ve noticed (along with others) that the reading comprehension skills of today’s students are different than they were when I started teaching. And it doesn’t seem that my observations are an anomaly: reports from The Atlantic, Frontiers in Psychology, and Inside Higher Ed agree.

In order to help students with their critical reading skills it is important to reserve time in class to discuss the assigned readings. In those discussions, we have an opportunity to model and practice three skills of birders that transfer quite well to the skills of a closer reader.

Be Still

In birdwatching, stillness is the first step. You have to slow down, let your body settle, and allow your senses to recalibrate. Then you can start to see the birds reveal themselves through sound and movement. 

The same principle applies to our classroom. Before students can engage meaningfully with a text, they need space to quiet the mental noise—notifications, deadlines, distractions—and settle into the moment. If students cognitive bandwidth is already full or stretched to its limit, it’s substantially harder to take in new information or perform under pressure.

Close reading demands cognitive presence. It asks us to notice nuance, track patterns, and interpret subtle shifts in tone or structure. But none of that is possible if our minds are cluttered. Stillness isn’t just a mood—it’s a method. It’s how we prepare the mental field so that the text can come into focus.

But how can we help students with this mental pause? In my class, I have students start with a freewrite each day. During this time, I take attendance and check in with students as needed. Students can either respond to my prompt or just do a brain dump. The idea is to temporarily offload whatever is on their mind for the next 90 minutes–similar to a reset button or turning your phone on airplane mode.

Listen Closely.

Now that we’ve slowed down and quieted our minds, we can start to take better stock of what’s around us. In birdwatching, listening becomes an art. It takes time to earn your field ear–to feel comfortable and confident identifying birds by their sounds alone. But even experienced birders can be fooled by birds that sound similar to each other. For those, we have to rely on additional cues, like pitch, rhythm, tone, and pace. 

Close reading works the same way. 

When students first read a text, they might latch onto the obvious elements, the same way new birders might over-rely on color alone to identify a species. Yet, with so many variations in plumage, looks alone aren’t always enough. Deeper understanding comes from listening for patterns or spotting anomalies. 

In my class, I model how to “listen” to a text–how to read between the lines for rhetorical choices like tone or bias.

For example, we might look for how the author used active or passive sentences. On the surface, we may not notice the use of passive sentences because we’re focused on the meaning of the sentence. But that’s the point of close reading; when we go back and re-read, we start to notice new things. 

“Listening closely” to a text can help students move beyond that surface comprehension. It will take reading and re-reading a text to hear what else is below the surface–the same way it takes practice to tease out the variety of birds singing and chirping in a tree at once. So what once felt like a cacophony of information in a text might turn out to be a rag-tag group of migrating songbirds.

Look around.

In birdwatching, what you see depends on where—and when—you’re looking. Our field by the river is bustling with warblers and orioles in spring, as they pass through on their migration north. That same field in winter? Besides the crunch of the snow, we might see a few year-round residents (like our friend, the Northern Cardinal), but nary a warbler to be found.

Rather than be frustrated that you can’t find a Blackpoll Warbler in February, it’s important to let context help create boundaries and understand what is or isn’t happening around us. That context would tell us that it’s remarkably rare to see a Blackpoll Warbler here in February.

In the same way we can help students look around to consider where (and when) they are in a text, by asking similar questions as a birdwatcher: 

• Where is this text? Am I seeing it in its natural space?
• When was it published? Is there something special about that time?
• Who is this text meant for? Am I the intended reader?

Just as birders learn to scan the landscape for clues, readers learn to scan the rhetorical terrain of a text. A statistic in a news article might be persuasive—or misleading—depending on its source and framing. Seeing a Monk Parakeet in a tree might seem improbable–unless you know your neighbor has one as a pet.

As students learn to parse through contextual clues and questions, they can begin to interpret not just what is being said, but why and how. Helping students to practice situating a text within a broader ecosystem of meaning teaches them that arguments don’t exist in isolation; that a deeper understanding can emerge from knowing context.

Spark moments

As teachers, we savor spark moments—the ones where a student sees something they hadn’t before.

Suddenly a line in a poem clicks. A historical argument takes on new meaning. A pattern of passive sentence structures in a text reveals itself. These moments aren’t always loud or dramatic. Sometimes they’re quiet, like a goldfinch quietly landing on my bird feeder on an unremarkable day in May. 

Good birders and good teachers share a belief in the power of looking again. In a world that demands hustle and rewards speed, it can be hard to not want to rush ahead. By challenging ourselves and our students to slow down and be present, we set the stage for allowing ourselves to be still, listen closely, and look around. 

For some students, adopting a new practice may come easily, but for others it might feel agonizing–especially if they feel it’s all just to read. But it’s not just reading is it? When we help students develop their critical reading skills, we’re teaching them how to be curious and notice what’s around them. And who knows, maybe one day it won’t feel just like reading, but more like seeing a bright yellow, goldfinch for the first time.