My students have been practicing their reasoning skills with CER. Every day at the end of their independent reading, they record their page numbers, summarize what they have learned, and identify one claim of fact, policy, or value. A student sample is pictured below.

On average, students improved their CER proficiency rates according to the following table. You can see that progress wasn’t constant and results ebbed and flowed. I attribute this to my coaching style. The first rep was difficult and after direct instruction every class made progress. Then the next day I upped my expectations that students would be able to follow the quote-cite-explain format I asked for. Many didn’t and the results waned. After additional instruction using a think-aloud, glows and grows model and these examples, results went up again.

CER	Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4	N=
P1	35	88	71	60	17
P2	21	54	29	54	14
P6	50	60	55	55	22
10th gr AVG	32	67	52	56	53
P4	18	36	46	64	28

I have learned that students need multiple reps in multiple classes if we are going to improve academic writing overall. My AP Lang teacher structures this differently, as does our AP Chemistry teacher, but the magic happens when the three of us get in the room and look at student work together. By making this a recursive assignment in all of our classes, we can improve student writing.

Leave a comment about the recursive assignments that happen at your school site. My students do an annotated bibliography twice per semester in each academic class. That, along with the consistent use of claims, evidence, and reasoning in multiple classes is helping our students build their confidence in college level work.