Creating Constructed Responses

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, there is a huge shift toward the inclusion of constructed responses in testing.  These concentrated responses provide students with the opportunity to show what they know.

Today, we focused on the RACE strategy for organizing information from a text in order to create a strong constructed response.

The students then read the article “The Sharebots” and completed the RACE graphic organizer below based on the following topic:

Prompt:

Read the article “The Sharebots” and answer the question below.

 ›Explain whether the author’s choice of words and phrases effectively describes the robots and their behaviors. In your response, use words and phrases from the passage that support your explanation. Write your answer on your answer document.

RACE Graphic Organizer

Upon verifying that each student understood how to use this mnemonic and graphic organizer, the were then provided with their homework assignment (which will also become part of tomorrow’s classwork assignment as well).  The students were to read the articles “Codetalking” and “The Navajo” and then create a constructed response to one of the six prompts below for homework:

  1. Explain whether knowing that the passage from “The Navajo” is non-fiction makes the article easier to understand. In your response, use information from the article that supports your explanation. Write your answer on your answer document.
  2. Explain which article more effectively uses words and phrases to persuade a reader about the value of the contributions of Native Americans during World War II. In your response, use information from the article that supports your explanation. Write your answer on your answer document.
  3. Explain what information could have been added to the passage from Codetalking to help a reader better understand an important idea in the article. In your response use information from the article that supports your explanation. Write your answer on your answer document.
  4. Which article more effectively expresses the author’s attitude toward the Code Talkers? In your response use information from the article that supports your answer. Write your answer on your answer document.
  5. Explain how a reader could determine the reliability of the information in the passage from The Navajo? In your response, use information from the article that supports your explanation. Write your answer on your answer document.
  6. What text feature could have been added to “Codetalking” so that a reader could better understand information about Native American languages? In your response use information from the article that supports your answer. Write your answer on your answer document.

The students will create two more constructed responses in class tomorrow from any of the remaining five prompts above.  The materials can be found below:

Homework:

  • Read for 30 minutes.
  • Create one constructed response to the texts “Codetalking” and “The Navajo” per the instructions above.

PowerPoint:

 

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