Good multi-media practice for informative reading.

Submitted 11 years ago
Eric W.
Eric W.
West Ottawa High School Campus
Holland MI, US
My Rating
Pedagogy
Supports

My Take

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.

How I Use It

I would use ThinkCERCA to introduce some background to our units. For example, we do a unit about how technology affects our lives. There are several articles, TED Talks, etc on ThinkCERCA that would be good background for our discussion.

I'd also use this as weekly practice with informational texts. ThinkCERCA exposes students to informational articles, videos, etc. It then asks students to answer five questions. These questions go beyond just knowledge level, too. It asks questions about the authors' intentions and structural choices.

ThinkCERCA also allows teachers to maintain records of students' performance on the reading questions, so improvement can be tracked.