WEAVING CURRICULUM-EMBEDDED READING ASSESSMENTS (CERA) THROUGHOUT A SEMESTER

If you read to the end of this abstract, you might think “This is very interesting, but I want my students to learn content...I can’t sacrifice valuable class time teaching them how to read.” Please allow me to convince you otherwise. As scientists and educators, we know that reading is an important skill, so why not spend some time teaching our students effective ways to read course-related content? Reading Apprenticeship is a research-based, educationally equitable approach designed to improve literacy and the ability to read critically for students in middle school to college, regardless of course subject. The framework of Reading Apprenticeship consists of four overlapping elements of classroom life, all of which are linked by metacognitive conversations. The social dimension establishes a safe and collaborative learning community with norms that support academic conversations. The personal dimension focuses on how students view their relationships to learning: Why do we read? What do we read? What challenges exist when reading a textbook? The cognitive dimension helps students develop a toolbox of reading strategies, such as monitoring comprehension and setting reading purposes. The knowledge-building dimension increases their confidence as critical readers by building and revising schema and exploring different kinds of knowledge (such as content, text structure, language, and disciplinary discourse). Introducing metacognition and creating a reading strategies list as a class will help launch the critical piece: dedicated class time for independent reading. This can take many forms but here will focus on a formative assessment that measures literacy growth, Curriculum-Embedded Reading Assessments (CERA). These reading activities take about 25-40 minutes of class time and include a short text to read followed by written responses to prompts about both the reading process and the content. Readings curated for CERA allow students to learn reading strategies and think about the metacognitive aspects of reading. Instructors can measure literacy growth with multiple assignments and an assessment rubric. One of my goals is to give students confidence to read earth science articles in the future, realizing that they can support their understanding by using reading strategies developed in our course.