Teachers College Reading and Writing Project
Writing Curricular Calendar, Grades 6-8, 2015
Test Preparation
Unit Five B - Test Preparation for the Writing Demands of the NYS ELA (Grades 6-8)
Late Feb/March
This version of the test preparation unit was created by the TCRWP in January and February of 2015.
The unit was developed based on the most up-to-date information we have on the 2015 tests, including the
New York State Educator Guides 2015 at each grade level, released and annotated questions and
answers from the 2014 NYS ELA, and 2014 student performance data from TCRWP schools.
This version of the test preparation unit was created by the TCRWP in January and February of 2015.
The unit was developed based on the most up-to-date information we have on the 2015 tests, including
the New York State Educator Guides 2015 at each grade level, released and annotated questions and
answers from the 2014 NYS ELA, and 2014 student performance data from TCRWP schools.
Extended response questions and scored student responses from previous years, can be found on the New
York State Testing Site: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/assessment/english/samplers/ela.html (though it is
important to note that these tests have become increasingly difficult since 2013). Sample questions for
2013 can be found at: http://engageny.org/resource/new-york-state-common-core-sample-questions, and
the annotated, released questions from the 2014 ELA are available at
http://www.engageny.org/resource/new-york-state-common-core-sample-questions.
Before addressing the plan for the unit and delving into the instructional decisions you will need to make,
it is important to remember that the ELA is primarily a reading test. While students are asked to write on
the test, it is always writing in response to reading. That is, the tasks of the exam are designed to assess
students’ ability to write from sources. While spelling and grammar factor into a student’s score, the
content of the response is more heavily weighted. Students are expected to demonstrate that they have
understood and analyzed the given passage(s), read and understood the prompt, and clearly incorporated
evidence from the passages in their responses.
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Teachers College Reading and Writing Project
Writing Curricular Calendar, Grades 6-8, 2015
Test Preparation
We suggest that you organize this unit into three bends, as described below and throughout the document.
For each bend of the unit you will need to collect and study student data, group your students according
to their most essential needs, and organize the materials you will use with your students.
Bend:
Focus:
Bend One
Week One
Short Response Questions
Bend Two
Weeks Two and Three
Extended Response -- Studying and Practicing
Extended Response Writing with Literary Texts
Bend Three
Weeks Four (and Five)
Extended Response -- Building Automaticity,
Stamina, and Fluency in Extended Response
Writing with Informational Texts (and More
Complicated Prompts)
Collect Your Data
As with any unit of study, you will need to begin your planning with assessment. In this document we lay
out a possible plan for the unit, but ultimately, you‘ll need to make decisions about the overall level,
experience, and needs of your writers. You may decide you don‘t need to spend as much time in one part
of the unit, based on how students are responding to the prompts and the work of each day. You might
decide to cut some sessions out, and expand others. Let your data inform the choices you make here to
ensure the unit most matches your students’ needs. This means that just as it is important for students to
practice writing responses to short and extended prompts, it is perhaps even more important for you to
study their responses and adjust your instruction for your whole class as well as small groups
accordingly.
Be sure you are using current data to make these decisions. If you don’t have current data, you could give
a prompt from a read aloud, or from a test prep assessment. **Note, if you are using Ready NY, only
give the first assessment from the “Assessment” book - the rest we have included as possible practice
prompts so that you can continue assessing in more targeted ways throughout the unit.
Some predictable kinds of data that will help you make decisions about grouping students:
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Student practice tests from Ready NY or other test prep assessment
MoSL essays if you did the NYC DOE’s performance writing tasks/SLO assessments.
On-demand or flash-draft writing from essay, literary essay, baby literary essay or argument
units
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Teachers College Reading and Writing Project
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Test Preparation
Group Your Students
You will probably want to begin each bend of the unit by sorting your students into three basic groups:
students for whom this test poses the most challenges - and who are ready to push for 2’s - students who
are on the cusp of meeting standards and are ready to push for 3’s, and students who are already
demonstrating some mastery of this kind of writing and are ready to push for 4’s. We’ve provided some
possible factors that could help you sort students into these groups so that you can provide the most
effective coaching. Of course, the work within these groups will also need to be targeted to individual
needs. Writing checklists for each group will help identify specific areas of strength and need. **Note these groups are flexible! If you see students mastering a level of work (successfully working
independently at the level of that group’s checklist and incorporating minilessons and small group work
into their responses), move the student into the next grouping so they are challenged and have the
opportunity to improve. See Bend One for recommendations of teaching to address issues for each group.
Students ready to push for 2’s:
● Written response demonstrates confusion about prompt and/or reading passages
● Student responses include mostly or all retell of part or all of the passages
● Student responses are too short to fully respond to prompt
● Student responses are illogical with few or no transitions that make sense
● Use of evidence is random or very sparse
Students ready to push for 3’s:
● Written responses are not fully developed
● Student loses focus, includes tangential or irrelevant information
● Details are not explained, and/or may not all truly match claims in the essay or answer the prompt
● Organization lacks coherence and clarity - transitions are weak and/or structure is lacking
● Doesn’t fully answer every part of the question, though there may be volume in writing
Students ready to push for 4’s:
● Demonstrate ability to respond fully to a prompt
● Could explain use of details with more insight and specificity
● May have voice, but lack connection of voice to the actual prompt
● Need to continue to include many text references in each section - not get too carried away with
analysis and not have time or space for citing specific examples
Suggested Materials Flow Across the Unit:
We recommend starting each bend with students working from passages they have read already, so that
their focus is on understanding the prompts and responding as writers. One way to do this is to use
passages they have seen and worked on in Reading Workshop at the start of each bend. On Treasure
Chest, in folders titled Short and Extended Response, you will find suggested passages from Ready New
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Teachers College Reading and Writing Project
Writing Curricular Calendar, Grades 6-8, 2015
Test Preparation
York that prompt for these kinds of responses – we have created the list to align with the bends of the
Reading Unit so that you can incorporate some of these passages as reading work first. You can also find
passages on the TCRWP Treasure Chest that can serve as both reading/multiple choice and writing/short
and extended response items.
Bend One: Short Response
●
●
3-4 model short response prompts from familiar passages
Additional passages from Ready NY or other source with short
response prompts – See Treasure Chest for Ready NY and other
suggested passages.
Bend Two: Extended
Response/Literary
●
Many examples of extended response prompts across genres for
launch lesson
2 examples of extended response prompts from familiar
passages (these will be literary if using from Reading Unit) for
modeling and student practice
Additional passages and prompts from Ready NY or other
source with extended response prompts - See Treasure Chest
for Ready NY and other suggested passages.
●
●
Bend Three: Extended
Response/Informational and
Working with Automaticity
●
●
1 example of informational extended response from a familiar
set of passages
Additional passages and prompts from Ready NY or other
source with short and extended response prompts - See
Treasure Chest for Ready NY and other suggested passages.
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Teachers College Reading and Writing Project
Writing Curricular Calendar, Grades 6-8, 2015
Test Preparation
Bend 1 – Short Responses
Students will be asked to respond to eight short response prompts across the second and third days of
the ELA. Though each individual question is only worth two points, taken together these questions
represent a significant opportunity for students to earn points on the test. Therefore, we recommend
beginning the writing unit of study with a close look at answering short responses. Further practice on
short response is then shifted to the reading unit, as this writing unit moves on to consider extended
response prompts. We suggest beginning with a focus on short responses for two main reasons. First,
we believe that beginning with short responses will provide the instructional space to teach student to
focus on the question and what is required to provide a complete answer. If students learn to focus on
prompts at the beginning of this unit, they will be in a better position across the entire unit and on the
actual ELA exam. Second, if students learn to answer the short response questions effectively, they will
not give up points on the exam that should be relatively easy to accumulate.
You’ll want to start out by working with a familiar text - perhaps one that you have already used in
Jeopardy games, or one that was shared during reading workshop. You will need several possible short
response questions off that text. You’ll teach students that the first job of a writer approaching a writing
prompt is to understand what the prompt is asking. You might suggest that students read a prompt, then
ask themselves the predictable questions: what is this question really asking? What evidence will I need
to find to answer it?
For example, a seventh grade short response prompt might look like:
“Explain why the author of the article “Race to the Klondike” included the section entitled “A HEAVY
LOAD.” Use two details from the article to support your answer.
The level of reading work required is much higher here than in earlier grades, but the process of
answering the short response is the same: figure out what the question is really asking, then decide on
relevant evidence. Here, the question is asking not just for a summary of the referenced section, but for
the student to explain its significance to the rest of the article. Noticing that this task requires thinking
about the whole article in addition to this one part is important.
Across the next couple of days, you might give students plenty of opportunities to work with short
response questions - these could continue to be off of passages they have read before in reading
workshop or they could be new, single or paired passages. You might teach them to re-read the prompt,
underlining key words that give directions. By the second or third day, depending on readiness, partners
may answer independently, then check their responses with each other and decide what the most
complete and accurate response would sound like. You can look at the rubric put out by the state for
short responses and work with your students to revise this into student-friendly language. Alternatively,
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Teachers College Reading and Writing Project
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Test Preparation
there is a sample short response checklist available on Treasure Chest. In addition, the following can
serve as a process checklist for kids to monitor their work and make sure they are completing each part
of the task: (See a checklist version of this on Treasure Chest in the Short Response folders).
Guidelines for Answering Short Responses:
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●
●
●
●
●
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Read the question carefully.
Ask: ‘What is the question asking me to do?’
Mark up the question to highlight key words and phrases.
Answer the question, making sure to address all parts.
Use details from the text to support your answer. Make sure these are specific details and that
they clearly reference the text (either by quoting or using the precise vocabulary from the text).
You will probably write a sentence that answers the question, then a sentence with specific textdetails giving evidence to support one part, then another sentence with specific text-details giving
evidence to support another part, and a final sentence about how the evidence connects with your
answer.
Write in complete sentences.
Your response is not a full essay--it is just 3-5 sentences. Do not restate the question or attempt a
fancy introduction or conclusion.
For students who struggle with these questions, know that they will get the full two points by
providing two text-based details, from different parts of the text, and they do not need to worry about
crafting a beautiful introductory or concluding statement. In fact, sometimes students get lost in
restating the prompt or elaborating and forget to include a second detail - which will mean only one
versus two points of credit. Pacing is also an issue, as the extended response prompts will take time to
process, plan and write - writers who get bogged down in the short responses might find themselves
short on time for the longer essay. They do, however, need to be sure to write in complete sentences.
Some tips for teaching the short response:
●
●
●
●
Make up answers that are wrong and involve students in analyzing why they are wrong and what
can be done to improve the responses (see the Treasure Chest for some examples).
If you have not played Jeopardy so far, you can play the games on Treasure Chest---including
ones for other grade levels.
Break up the teaching. First have students say back what the question is asking them to do. Then
have them try different ways to make a claim--they can write this claim in the air. Put some up
on the document camera and involve the students in discussing which are the best claims and
why.
To see if students have understood the question, before they write the claim on paper, see if they
can find the text details to help them answer the question and then explain how the details they
have picked helped them to answer the question and support their claim.
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Teachers College Reading and Writing Project
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Test Preparation
●
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Help students to realize that if the text evidence comes from all one paragraph, they are in danger
of repeating a detail and only using one. You might suggest to them that they look for details in
more than one part of the text.
Let students know that they should not need to write more than the lines they are given. They
should spend their time composing a claim and writing specific text evidence (2 details at least).
If the question is a two part question, students need to be sure that they have at least one text
detail to support their claim for one part of the question and one detail to support their claim for
the second part of the question.
Have students use a rubric to score their own and each other’s responses (in a supportive
manner), tallying their work for each subcategory on the rubric as a way to clearly understand
the expectations for the task.
In this first bend, but also throughout the entire unit, you will want to be sure that you are holding
students accountable for using their best grammar, spelling, and handwriting. Be especially mindful and
attentive to the glaring errors students make -- lack of capitalization, missing endmarks, and misspellings
of high frequency words are particularly troublesome. In one month it is unlikely (impossible) that you
will achieve an overhaul of a student’s command of conventions, but you can draw increased attention to
a few points as a means of improvement and to ensure that these challenges do not overwhelm the adults
reading the students’ responses. As mentioned above, the test is a reading test, so this should not be your
main priority, merely one more instructional piece to consider.
Bend Two: Extended Response -- Studying and Practicing Extended
Response Writing with Literary Texts
The extended response presents many challenges for students. These are complex performance
assessments that require students to “put it all together” - to use their best analytic reading and thinking,
planning, and knowledge of writing craft to respond to a multi-part prompt. Because of the complexity of
the work, students will show a variety of strengths and needs - you will want to be sure to assess quickly
and give feedback in the moment during your workshop. Middle school teachers especially, you will want
to give the students lots of opportunity to practice, but you will not be able to collect and score everything
students write. Therefore, structure class time so that all students will get feedback from a partner, or
through self-assessment with a checklist at the end of each class. Set up a system of table folders so that
students leave their work in class in a manageable container - that way you can spend time ‘thin-slicing’ looking quickly at groups of student work to decide what’s most important for the next day’s lesson,
small groups and conferring.
When you assemble your materials for this bend, we suggest that you make use of extended prompts that
refer to the literary test passages your students have read in reading workshop when possible. In this way
you will be able to focus students’ attention more on the writing tasks at hand. If this is not possible, you
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Teachers College Reading and Writing Project
Writing Curricular Calendar, Grades 6-8, 2015
Test Preparation
will want to provide students with time at the beginning of the writing workshop to read the relevant
passages before they begin working with the writing tasks required.
It will probably be helpful for your students (and for you!) to have some general knowledge about the
types of prompts and tasks they can expect to encounter on the extended responses.
Common extended response prompts for literary passages:
● character change questions
● compare/contrast questions
● theme questions
Starting with the prompt: understanding the prompt and the work at hand
For the first day (or two, if needed, which is likely!), we recommend spending time with your students
reading a range of extended response prompts in order to understand the types of questions they can
expect to see on the test as well as the work they will need to do to respond to these prompts effectively.
To begin, you might introduce a number of extended response prompts for a passage (or pair of passages)
that students have already read or heard read aloud so that they can focus on the prompts and the required
work. You will probably need to explicitly teach students to read the questions carefully, asking:
● What does this question mean?
● Can I say it back to myself?
● What are the key words that help me understand the question? Are there tricky words or phrases
that I need to figure out?
● What do I need to do to answer this question?
These questions may seem simple and straightforward to us as adult readers and experienced test takers,
but many, perhaps most, students need to see demonstrations of the ways to thoroughly answer each of
these questions. Of course, they will also need practice and feedback as they work to do this
independently. Once students are able to name the parts of a prompt, we suggest they number each part in
order to support more organized annotation of the texts.
For example, taking a 5th grade extended response prompt again, we should ask, “What does this
question mean? What do I need to do to answer this question?”
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Test Preparation
The story “Excerpt from Mr. Revere and I” and the article “Excerpt from The Many Rides of Paul
Revere: The Boston Tea Party” are written from different points of view. How do the different points of
view affect the understanding of the events surrounding the Boston Tea Party? Use details from both
passages to support your response
When students are asking these questions about the prompt, they might say, “We need to compare and
contrast the points of view in Mr. Revere and I and in the article Excerpt from the Many Rides of Paul
Revere. Then we need to explain how the point of view in each text affects the reader’s understanding of
the events around the Boston Tea Party. And we need to be sure to use details from both texts in the
answer.”
We might underline key words and number as follows:
The story “Excerpt from Mr. Revere and I” and the article “Excerpt from The Many Rides of Paul
Revere: The Boston Tea Party” are written from different points of view. How do the different points of
view affect the understanding of the events surrounding the Boston Tea Party? Use details from both
passages to support your response
When working with a range of extended responses, you will want to highlight for students that these
prompts, while often complicated, may sometimes be treated as a series of short response questions. If
this point is made clear and students regularly work on breaking the tasks of the prompt into smaller parts
the entire task will become more manageable.
Move to annotating and coding the text for relevant evidence
After students have worked on understanding the prompt, you will want to teach them to return to the
texts and annotate the specific examples required to support their responses. Again, we suggest you
demonstrate and provide students with practice and guidance using some straightforward questions
related to the texts.
When annotating texts, students need to know to ask,
● Which text will answer this question?
● Which part of the text will answer the question?
Next, students need to return to the text in order to underline and annotate relevant examples in the
passages. As mentioned above, we recommend students use numbers to code the text to be sure that they
are answering each part of the question. Many students get lost in the multiple tasks required of the
extended responses, numbering the parts of the question and using numbers to mark the text examples
should help with this predictable challenge. Similarly, when returning to the texts to underline examples,
students may lose track of the question posed, so you will probably also want to teach your students to
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Teachers College Reading and Writing Project
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Test Preparation
return to the question and the passages to double check that the evidence they have chosen truly matches
the question.
Once students are able to underline relevant examples that will indeed answer the question posed, you’ll
want to teach them to also double check their thinking by asking, “Am I using the most relevant text
details?”
Many teachers find it helpful to provide students with checklists so that they can monitor their process.
Example of a process checklist for Extended Response Writing:
Yes
Starting To
Not Yet
I read the question carefully and ask, “What does this question
mean?” “What is it asking me to do?”
If there are tricky words or phrases, I stop to figure them out the
best I can. Sometimes I have to reread or think about what makes
sense in the sentence.
I say back the question in my own words.
I identify all parts of the question and number them.
I go back to the text(s) and underline the facts or details that will
help me answer the question.
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Test Preparation
As in any writing unit of study, you will want to demonstrate this work, popping out when you are NOT
underlining or circling evidence because it doesn’t go with anything that has been asked. In the upper
grades and middle school, this will be especially important, as the passages are long and dense, and many
lines will not apply to the points the writer has been asked to make. For the active engagement section of
your minilesson, you may channel students to work in partnerships to find a second detail for the same
part of the essay that you have modeled. Again, point out that each paragraph is kind of like its own short
answer - students will want to try to put a couple of details in each paragraph, just as they put a couple of
bits of text-evidence in their short answers. If they are writing about two paired passages, they’ll want to
write details from each text to make each point, and if they are writing about one text, they will want to
mine different parts of the text for their text-details. This annotation work should feel familiar from
students work with nonfiction reading, from other text based writing they have done in writing workshop
and from Bend One of this unit.
During independent practice, students may work independently to annotate and code evidence that they
think would be relevant to the next parts of the shared class essay. For the share, you might ask a few
students share out and ask the class to analyze: which evidence is the strongest for the part of the essay in
question. You will probably also ask students to do this work repeatedly with different prompts so that the
practices of analyzing and quickly preparing to write extended response prompts becomes more and more
natural for students.
The last couple of days in this first week should focus on flash drafting the body paragraphs - using
transitions to set up the evidence well (“According to the text” or “Readers learn that…” or “The text
says,...” etc.; “More evidence can be found later in the text when readers learn that…” “In addition,...” )
and then connect the evidence to the topic sentence of the paragraph and/or the claim of the whole essay
(“This demonstrates that…” “This illustrates….”) Don’t worry yet about introductions and conclusions,
as these will be highlighted later. For tips on this, see the “Writing from Sources” document in the
“Additional Materials” folder for your grade.
Leave a space in your schedule for the week to address misconceptions - to give students additional time
with this work and time for you to confer if needed. Or this extra session might be absorbed into a
Reading Marathon, where students have extended time to read, annotate and jot questions and thoughts.
(See the write-up for Test Prep Reading for more on this.)
Small Group Work and Conferring:
During this bend, you will want to take advantage of every opportunity to give targeted feedback and
coaching. The groups you have set up will help you make a rough estimate of the kind of work students
should focus on, but within each group you will also need to assess and respond.
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Test Preparation
Here are some recommended teaching tips for students in these three rough categories:
Students ready to move to 2’s:
If students are...
You could teach...
Demonstrating confusion
around multi-step prompts
●
Treat each part of the prompt as a short response. Stack
these together into body paragraphs.
Getting confused trying to
restate the prompt
●
Skip the introduction and answer the first part of the prompt
first, then the next part.
Skip the conclusion, or, if time, write a final sentence that
answers one or more parts of the prompt.
●
●
Picking random or inaccurate
details to include
●
No transitions between sections
●
Re-read/skim passages for key words in the question,
choosing details from the parts that match.
Grades 5 and up: Pull direct quotes where possible, as this is
expected and also it avoids students paraphrasing
incorrectly.
Have students talk through body paragraphs using flash
cards with key transitions, then write what they said.
Students ready to move to 3’s:
If students are...
You could teach...
Responding partially to prompts
●
●
Losing focus, including
tangential or irrelevant
information
●
Not explaining or connecting
details from the text to their
response
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●
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Writing in an unclear structure
or using weak transitional
phrases
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Work with students to plan with boxes and bullets as they
know how to do from past teaching.
Teach them to create a lead that clearly answers the question
fully.
Give students a sort, prompting them to match evidence to a
claim and select out the evidence that doesn’t match.
Teach them to not stray from the prompt in their conclusion.
Be sure they are quoting directly, and checking that the
quotes match the point of the paragraph they are in.
Teach sentence frames for moving from evidence to
explanation. Have students try several of them and decide
which they like the best.
Teach students to lift words or phrases from the text(s) even
in explanations to build in key vocabulary and concepts.
Use exemplar responses as an inquiry for students to
annotate - where do they see transitions? How is the
response put together?
Teach students to transition in and out of each piece of
evidence.
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Test Preparation
Students ready to move to 4’s:
If students are...
You could teach...
Responding fully to prompts
●
Teach these students to pause before writing to think: what’s
the most important thing I’m planning to say? How could I
write this in an interesting way in my introduction? How can
I make a roadmap in my intro of how my essay will go?
Explaining details with
accuracy
●
Students could demonstrate that they are ranking the details
they’re using. They could say: This detail showed _______
the best because… Another detail that was not as
effective/important was… because…
Students at this level can spend a little time crafting their
analysis - thinking about how to convincingly connect
evidence to their claim. Some higher level sentence frames
might help, such as : this was revealing… this illuminated…
Middle School: Teach these students to push for an analysis
of craft within these responses, even if author’s craft is not
necessarily the subject: the author’s choice to _____ leads
the reader to understand ______.
●
●
Writing with voice, but
sometimes departing from a
formal tone or forgetting to
respond specifically to the
prompt.
●
●
Consider your audience - the audience of teachers. Make
sure that your tone is one of seriousness, and one that shows
the reader that you really understand the prompt.
Middle School: Although personal connections are likely to
take students off task, connections to relevant issues can
show insight. Phrases like: “This topic resonates in today’s
world because…” or “This kind of conflict connects to…”
Self-Assessing with a Checklist and Introductions and Conclusions for Extended Responses
For the second week of this work, you’ll need to make decisions about what is most important for your
students and will probably want to encourage students to assess their own work. In addition to the
possible small groups and teaching points above, you’ll want to be sure that students use a checklist to
self-assess their work on extended responses. There are suggested checklists for each grouping of students
in Treasure Chest, in the Extended Response folders. There is a checklist for students with IEP’s, one for
students who will have scribes, one for students whose extended response data indicates they are ready to
push for 2’s, students ready to push for 3’s, and students ready to push for 4’s. These checklists are
different so that each group can focus on priority, high-leverage moves for that group. If you see certain
students mastering all items on a checklist, regroup and give those students the next level checklist and
instruction to help them get going on it. These checklists are designed at the 3 and 4 levels to align to the
writing checklists they are used to in writing workshop. For the lowest level checklists, the design is
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Test Preparation
meant to be as user-friendly and concrete as possible to give students a clear game plan for these complex
tasks.
Of course, you could instead choose to work with students by looking together at the actual ELA writing
rubric (see the back of the ELA Guide from engage NY for the specific rubric for your grade level).. You
may want to turn this into a student-friendly version and then involve your students in an inquiry, letting
them look between the rubric and their opinion and informational writing checklists, noticing what is
common from the checklists to the rubric. Ask them to look at the highest level of the rubric and circle
what seems the same between the rubric and the checklist. They will likely be excited to notice the
multiple similarities between these. You can also ask them to annotate the rubric, noting what might not
be on the checklists, but in general, students should see that what the test makers are calling for them to
write is work that they already have been doing across the year.
They can now begin to use a checklist or rubric to self-assess and revise their own work. Push them to
hold themselves to the highest levels of the rubric and as they become more familiar with it, encourage
them not to always look at it, but to just remember the basics: text evidence to answer the questions
posed, well-organized structure, transitions to keep work cohesive, etc.
For some students, you may also want to teach the essential steps in writing introductions and conclusions
that achieve the goals of good test writing, but don’t take the writer (and ultimately the scorer!) away
from the focused task at hand. First and foremost, you want to teach students that they cannot write an
introduction if they have not prepared for writing the rest of the essay - this is why it’s key to teach this
after you teach the work or understanding the prompts and annotating texts. Students are too apt to jump
into an introduction without really thinking through how the whole piece needs to go, and that
introduction can lead them astray.
Similarly, you will want to teach your students that when writing a conclusion, they will need to refer
back to the prompt in order to be sure that any concluding statements are related to the prompt and the
texts. If students are addressing the main tasks of the prompt successfully and are ready to tackle work on
conclusions, you may first, teach them to restate the central claim of the prompt. If students are proficient
at providing a simple concluding statement, you will probably want to teach them to write conclusions
that offer some insight. When teaching students about conclusions, it may be helpful to teach some
general sentence starters to conclude their responses such as:
● This text(s) is important because…
● This text(s) teaches…
● These texts convinced me that…
● Reading this made me realize…
● These texts imply that…
● A conclusion readers could draw is…
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Test Preparation
It’s a balancing act, and you will want to show examples of introductions that are too skimpy (basically
impossible to discern from the first body paragraph), as well as those that are redundant, and those that
may be insightful, but just don’t introduce the topic that the prompt is asking for. Conclusions often suffer
from all of these above-listed problems. Keep intro and conclusions to the point, text-centered (mention
the texts by name), and relatively short, as the meat of the essay will come in the body paragraphs, with
the accumulation of evidence. For test writers who are ready for a challenge, especially at the middle
school level, teach them that beginning with a quote, only if it truly addresses the prompt, can be an
impressive lead.
Bend Three - Building Automaticity, Stamina, and Fluency in
Extended Response Writing with Informational Texts and More
Complicated Prompts
During this bend, your goal will be to show students different types of prompts and get them to be
flexible and able to respond to all sorts of prompts. While you focused on literary passages in the
previous bend, in this third, and last, bend of the unit you will want to support students’ practice with
informational texts and the accompanying prompts. The prompts that accompany informational texts
may be similar in many ways to the tasks required of literary passages. But given the topics and
structures of informational passages, other kinds of prompts will also apply.
Common extended response prompts for informational passages:
● compare/contrast questions (these may be structured similarly to literary prompts)
● main/central idea questions (these may be similar to theme questions in literature)
● questions that ask students to use information from one text and apply it to reading another text
● questions that ask students to synthesize information from two texts to discuss a topic common to
both
Again, we suggest that you begin this bend by making use of informational texts the students have
already read in reading workshop so that they can focus on the writing skills required to tackle these new
types of prompts. However, you will move to new texts within this bend because it will soon be time for
students to put all they have learned together.
Many of your instructional decisions will depend on what your students have shown you in the previous
two bends of the unit. It is likely that you will continue and put considerable attention into your small
group instruction and the feedback you give your students. You can do a day of writing then a day of
revision, then a day of writing to a different prompt and so on. You‘ll want to order your materials
strategically, showing students more simple, straightforward prompts first and then moving to more
complicated ones. Be sure that the prompts you are giving the students contain opportunities to practice
the work that your data shows your students need. So if they need to work on more analytic writing, you
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Test Preparation
might have them practice three of these in a row, for example, each time giving feedback and having
small group work and letting students comb new revisions learned through all of their essays.
In addition to the small group work that you have taken up with your students in bends one and two (see
chart in Bend Two for teaching that may still be needed for many students), you may find that some
students need additional help with prompts that require integration of information or questions related to
authorial craft and intent.
If you see...
You could teach...
Students are mismatching evidence or bringing in
evidence from only one text.
Teach students to re-read very targeted parts of the
passages - using key words from the prompt to
guide them to the right part. Before starting to
write, they should re-read these parts and practice
main idea work: what are these parts teaching me
about this topic? Do I have something from both
texts on this topic?
Students are having trouble answering questions
that ask them to consider author’s craft.
Use the author’s goals and techniques cards - in a
limited way. Focus on goals and techniques that
are most commonly asked: setting description tied
to mood/tone; facts or statistics tied to setting
context or proving a point. Look at a specific
prompt and show how the goals and techniques
cards could apply. Have students practice on other
passages and prompts.
Administer and Assess Your Students’ On-Demand Writing
At this point in the unit we think it will be helpful to administer and assess an on-demand of the short and
extended responses so that you can make final decisions about the most important work your students
need to tackle in the last days before the test. Of course, you will need to be sure that you schedule time
to assess your students’ work quickly so that this data is truly helpful. When assessing your students’
work you can return to the conferring and small group suggestions from bend two. Keep in mind that for
many students, tackling the slightly more complicated informational or craft-related prompts may take
precedence at this point. For others (probably the more proficient writers), you may choose to spend
additional time on effective introductions and conclusions.
Putting It All Together
In addition to the on-going small group work you will conduct based on students’ on-demand work,
you’ll also want to help your whole class practice putting all of their test-taking skills to work. While we
have recommended helping students focus on the writing tasks of the test by using texts they have
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Test Preparation
already read in reading workshop, we also know that it will be important for many students to have
experience putting their reading and writing work together. Part of this will mean coaching students to
use their reading strategies with unfamiliar texts and then moving on to write short and extended
responses. so that the whole experience more closely mirrors the Day Two and Day Three writing
portions of the text. You‘ll want students to be ready to write to any sort of prompt so you‘ll want to be
sure that they have seen and practiced writing.
As students work you’ll want to be sure that you are mindful of their pacing and will possibly need to
support students by providing an awareness of how much time has passed and where they should
approximately be in their work. While you won’t be able to do this on the test, you will help students
gain a felt sense of how long each part of the test should take. In addition, you’ll want to be sure that
students know that when moving from a short response to an extended response they may be asked
questions that draw on the same text evidence. Some students may think that if they have used a
particular example in a short response they can’t use it another time in the extended response. Be sure
that students maintain their focus on the essentials of the prompts and using the best, most relevant text
evidence.
You’ll also want to be sure that your students feel confident as the test approaches. This means that you
will need to strike the right balance of giving students feedback that is constructive and will aid them on
the test, you’ll also want to ensure that your students feel confident (or as confident as possible) about
their ability to tackle this test. Keeping calm and maintaining a positive, pro-active stance may be one of
the most important things you can teach your students about success on tests and in life.
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