Community reviews for ThinkCERCA

This tool was excellent in showing students growth from beginning of the year until the end. I highly recommend this teaching tool.

This produce is excellent for immediate feedback. There are comprehension quizzes that score right away so teachers can see what part of the reading students did/did not understand. Grading online is easy and provides a lot of insight into the students' minds because all their notes and highlights are available fore the teacher to see. This makes providing feedback very personal and targeted to individual students needs. It is also easy to adjust reading levels within topic areas so students who are may be at a lower or higher level can work at their independent reading level.

While I found ThinkCERCA worked well for intervention, I wish there were second chances on the multiple choice comprehension check as well as on the written argument. This change would help my students be more thoughtful about their selected responses.

The articles are a manageable length and I really like the way ThinkCERCA handles vocabulary. Words are bolded and the definition is a click away. This makes it easy for students to closely read and comprehend material that might otherwise be very challenging. One reading can be assigned to a class and the vocabulary support allows for differentiation. The multiple choice quizzes are adequate checks for understanding, but I would like to see higher level thinking skills incorporated such as open ended questions that require explanations and inferences. The paid version of the program may include more of these opportunities. Although teacher guidance is needed, this site addresses many of the ELA Common Core Standards for Science and Technical Subjects, better than if a teacher simply found articles on his/her own. There are different formats; while most of the resources are articles, there are some infographics and TedTalks which provide students with varied opportunities and practice in accessing information. The selection of articles, especially relating to all fields of science, are limited. I hope that the number and breadth of articles expands in the future.

Signing up (which is free and easy) takes you to the main screen, where you are presented with lesson plans that are in no particular order - but you can pick them by grade band. Clicking on one of the lessons, you an have the program read you the passage, but I found the volume to be too low to hear. There is a question (Assessment) section and a vocabulary tab as well, both are easy to find and use. The website leans towards literacy more so than any other subject area.

I love this tool for individualizing instruction. The free version that I have used is great--especially since it is free!-- but I would love my district to purchase the full version so that I'd have access to more reading selections and the ability to search for specific topics. Also, I believe the paid version provides more writing opportunities beyond just multiple choice assessment. I think that would really add to how I could use this with my students but I'm not sure I can convince my district to spring for $40/student. One thing I'd love to see is a little more division of the articles by subject. They're all lumped together by grade level; it would be nice to be able to search by topic, too.

The site is limited in the articles that are provided without a subscription. I thought that, in general, the reading passages were challenging. Because of this, I assigned the lower grade level equivalent to my lower level students (my 8th graders were reading 4th grade articles). I liked that I could assign individual students an article or the entire class. The articles were interesting enough that even though they might be reading on a lower level, my students were still engaged. Some of the paid subscription services that are missing from the free version: I would like the ability to search through other articles based on those missed standards, so that students can practice them until they are mastered. Additionally, I’d love to see a life-time ability for students to discover trends or standards that they regularly missed. I could manually click between article question results to determine which standards individual students mastered, but if there was a way to pull a report with this information, that might make it an easier tool to use to pull data. Additionally, I would love to see more done with the vocabulary component: words are introduced with the article but are set aside in the free version of the site.

The FREE version of ThinkCerca is a great way to support writing across the curriculum for students in grades 4-12. Teachers in all content areas will see this as a great way to support writing and save time looking through a myriad of informational sources. First, teachers can have students read or view information, and then write their argumentative response around that topic. Students can even participate in debates or Socratic Seminars on the topics. They offer a variety of high interest articles that students will actually want to talk about. After discussing the content with the whole class or in small groups, students will be more motivated and empowered to write about it. Taking the short quiz after viewing the content, will help gauge students comprehension and inform instruction for teachers. I liked the variety of informational media provided for students to interact with as it allows students to build their research and information fluency. I recommended it for a wide variety of students because even for students with low reading comprehension or for students new to learning the English language it will read the text aloud for them. I think ThinkCerca will engage even the most reluctant readers!

I am excited to utilize this new tool in my classroom. I like that ThinkCERCA tracks students' performance on the quizzes. I'm not sure if students can access previous performance, but it's great that they get immediate feedback on their work. I also really like the variety of media available on the site. I hope they continue to add content. It's cool that it's sorted by reading level and that it's not all print media. ThinkCERCA is a great tool for students to practice their informative reading. It's an easy digital tool to reach the CCSS RI standards at multiple levels. It's also great that the texts offer an option that will read the article to the student for developing readers.

Overall, I really liked this product. I liked being able to pick the student reading levels, having the text be audible, and having a text comprehension check-in. (Students complete a quick five question CCSS-aligned check-in after reading the text so that I can check for understanding, which is useful as a teacher. There is a rubric that goes with each CERCA though I had a hard time grading each CERCA each week.) In addition, I liked the practice for my students since most had little experience writing arguments. One drawback is that the source is a single source (and text-based rather than multimedia options). Also, they did get tired of the repetitive nature of the doing a thinkCERCA a week and so in the future, I am going to think about how to integrate it better into my other classes. Students also felt limited by having to take a stand on items when sometimes they agreed with both sides. After using the program, my students had a better understanding of how to structure an argument, how to find evidence in the text, and how to write an argument. Still, I can't see this replacing my entire writing curriculum and at $40 per student, it is quite expensive as a part of my language arts program (since I also use paid programs for vocabulary, grammar, and other ELA strands).