The
Critical Reading Assessment Rubric provides a means to
assess each of the four questions individually or
collectively for a holistic score. As students read a piece
of text, they must be able to answer the following
questions:
What does the text say? (Briefly summarize the short story
at a literal level.)
How does it say it? In other words, how does the author
develop the text to convey his/her purpose? (What are the
genre, format, organization, features, etc.?)
What does the text mean? (What message/theme/concept is the
author trying to get across?)
So what? (What does the message/theme/concept mean in your
life and/or to the lives of others?)
The following rubric can be used to assess each question or
all the questions together.
Close and
Critical Reading Rubric
Some teachers use the critical reading assessment rubric as
a way to determine the level at which the students have
developed in their critical reading skills. Often teachers
use one piece of text and the four questions as a pre and
post assessment. This is a way to set up a progress
monitoring system for students overtime and with different
types of text.