| TAKS Open-Ended Response Questions |
Do you have any tips on answering the TAKS open-ended questions?
I do. In a nutshell, here's what I do:
Teaching them How To Answer a Question (not in writing, but out
loud)
1. Have the students practice answering questions about themselves,
NOT about stories or written text, using the pick-a-punk dialogue Q&A
format. Do these out loud. Have fun with them. I do two a day (just you
and a volunteer at the front of the class, in front of everyone, you using
the script for "pick-a-punk" and the other person answering the
questions) at the beginning of class, and don't tell students that it's even
related to TAKS.
Teaching Them To Answer A Question About a Story They Already
Know (they prepare it in writing so they can "perform" the
dialogue out loud)
2. Have students write questions about movies they've all seen, using the
Generic Questions page for model question templates.
3. Have them write QA12345 scripts to answer their questions, using the
pick-a-punk dialogue format, above, and then act out their questions and
dialogues.
Teaching Them How To Answer A Question From a Story They Just
Read (they prepare it in writing so they can "perform" the
dialogue out loud)
4. Have them write questions about stories they read, using the same
Generic Questions page.
5. Have them write answers to these questions, and on #1 and #3, use
ONLY quotations of text from the stories.
That's what I do. We don't even try to make them insightful or global, just
shoot for a 2. The above will get them score points of 2 if they just do
that with the questions from the test. In fact, for the first two questions,
they can do QA125 and get 2s. I advise all of my students to do this,
NOT to write tiny little essays, shooting for 3s. Go for a 2 and move on,
saving all that energy for something else, like their composition or lunch.
Teaching Them How To Craft Their Answer Better
6. Do sentence-combining exercises. Prepare for this by getting one of
your own students' score-point-two answers (or the older one I'm
sending) from any recent TAKS, and breaking it down into
sentence-combining exercises.
7. Hand them out and ask students to combine the sentences better than
they are, individually.
8. Compare answers.
9. Look at the student's original answer on the overhead.
10. Repeat this process with another score-point-two question, readied
for a sentence-combining exercise.
11. Repeat this process with a score-point-three question.
2008 Gretchen Bernabei www.trailofbreadcrumbs.net
I do. In a nutshell, here's what I do:
Teaching them How To Answer a Question (not in writing, but out
loud)
1. Have the students practice answering questions about themselves,
NOT about stories or written text, using the pick-a-punk dialogue Q&A
format. Do these out loud. Have fun with them. I do two a day (just you
and a volunteer at the front of the class, in front of everyone, you using
the script for "pick-a-punk" and the other person answering the
questions) at the beginning of class, and don't tell students that it's even
related to TAKS.
Teaching Them To Answer A Question About a Story They Already
Know (they prepare it in writing so they can "perform" the
dialogue out loud)
2. Have students write questions about movies they've all seen, using the
Generic Questions page for model question templates.
3. Have them write QA12345 scripts to answer their questions, using the
pick-a-punk dialogue format, above, and then act out their questions and
dialogues.
Teaching Them How To Answer A Question From a Story They Just
Read (they prepare it in writing so they can "perform" the
dialogue out loud)
4. Have them write questions about stories they read, using the same
Generic Questions page.
5. Have them write answers to these questions, and on #1 and #3, use
ONLY quotations of text from the stories.
That's what I do. We don't even try to make them insightful or global, just
shoot for a 2. The above will get them score points of 2 if they just do
that with the questions from the test. In fact, for the first two questions,
they can do QA125 and get 2s. I advise all of my students to do this,
NOT to write tiny little essays, shooting for 3s. Go for a 2 and move on,
saving all that energy for something else, like their composition or lunch.
Teaching Them How To Craft Their Answer Better
6. Do sentence-combining exercises. Prepare for this by getting one of
your own students' score-point-two answers (or the older one I'm
sending) from any recent TAKS, and breaking it down into
sentence-combining exercises.
7. Hand them out and ask students to combine the sentences better than
they are, individually.
8. Compare answers.
9. Look at the student's original answer on the overhead.
10. Repeat this process with another score-point-two question, readied
for a sentence-combining exercise.
11. Repeat this process with a score-point-three question.
2008 Gretchen Bernabei www.trailofbreadcrumbs.net
Punk dialogue
Questions for practice
Generic questions
Wiz of Oz questions
Sample fairy tale
questions
Sentence combining
exercises
Exercise answers for
transparencies
Questions for practice
Generic questions
Wiz of Oz questions
Sample fairy tale
questions
Sentence combining
exercises
Exercise answers for
transparencies
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