Reading Metacognition Checklist for Instructors

There are many ways to help students (1) become more aware of their own reading behaviors and (2) be able to monitor and make decisions about them. Specifically, to what extent do we

• Help student recognize the reading strategies they do use?
• Help students learn new strategies and evaluate them?
• Help students evaluate the differing needs posed by different genres and levels, different reading purposes, and different levels of prior knowledge?
• Help students select appropriate strategies for differing reading situations?
• Help students develop standards for comprehension failure, so that they can recognize when they don’t understand what they’re reading?
• Specifically do we help them recognize when any of the following makes a difference in their comprehension:
  * not understanding a word (lexical)
  * not relating the idea to their own knowledge (external consistency)
  * not recognizing contradictions within the text (internal consistency)
  not recognizing when they don’t see how the parts of a sentence are related (syntax)
  * not recognizing when they don’t see the relationship between sentences or parts of the essay (organizational cohesiveness)
  * not recognizing when there are information or perspectives missing (informational completeness)