CERA

WHAT IS A CERA?
C.E.R.A. stands for Curriculum-Embedded Reading Assessment. A CERA is a 20-minute formative assessment of students' content-area reading skills. Please don't be intimidated by the long name; CERAs are very easy to administer and, other than picking a text and printing off copies, will not create a lot of extra work for you. A CERA is more like a reading lesson than a test. Students read a teacher-selected piece of text and annotate their thoughts (talk to the text) as they read. After reading, students respond to a series of questions. Finally, the teacher debriefs the reading process by leading the class in a discussion about... A CERA can be completed once to get an idea of how students are doing with respect to text annotation and summarizing or can be completed several times to begin tracking students' development and progress. Don't overlook the potential of CERA to be a powerful data source to show student growth on your teacher evaluation. Please read the directions for how to administer your CERA in the file below.
 * what went well with the reading (and why);
 * what was hard about the reading (and why); and
 * any questions they have.

Choosing Y our CERA Text
A CERA text should be short, preferrably one-page or less, and similar to other texts you use in your content area. Students should be able to read and respond to your CERA text in approximately 10 minutes. The subject of the text SHOULD NOT be content you will cover between now and the post CERA. We are simply looking at students' reading process, not how well they know the material.

All teachers will be using the same questions to accompany their CERA. The questions can be found in the file below.