Falling in Love with Close Reading

Students have been focusing on reading closely in terms of academic reading material. But for them to see how this is not just an academic focus, they will choose 3 "texts" online to read closely and come to a better understanding. These 3 texts include a poem (or most students choose songs), a short video (advertisements, trailers, funny videos, etc), and an image (artwork, memes, portraits, advertisements, etc). Once they have chosen their 3 texts, they must then go through the process of reading these texts closely. This includes making note of what they originally believe the text is conveying. Next, they will take notes on the text. They may choose to take note of word choice, details, imagery, structure, colors, shape, etc. as long as they take notes. Next, they will make note of the emerging patterns that will lead them to a deeper meaning.
To present this information, students will create a padlet/wallwisher that contains all the required information. Using padlet, which has an app, students can link to their original sources, write notes onto their "wall," upload documents such as pictures of their notes, upload other digital learning tools, such as Tagxedo, Voki, Google docs, Prezis, presentations from blabberize, and the list goes on.
Students may work on this assignment with partners because our system has instituted Google emails for each student. Students are learning (finally) how to create and share documents and then to publish them to the web.