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6 Tips to Writing a High-Scoring Extended Response
By: Jess Mazzone
Writing an Extended Response can feel overwhelming for kids to write and us to teach! If you’re looking for some quick tips to make it more approachable, you’re in the right spot. Below are 6 strategies to help you and your writers crush the Extended Response.
By implementing these strategies, you can make writing extended responses more manageable and even enjoyable for your students. Remember, consistent practice and positive reinforcement are key to improvement.
For a more comprehensive guide to enhancing writing skills, explore our Units of Study in Writing for Grades K-2 . Additionally, consider inspiring your students by decorating your classroom with motivational quotes. Check out our favorite writing quotes to find quotes that can encourage and uplift your young writers.
1. Use the prompt as an outline.
One of the hardest parts about writing can be knowing where to start. Teach writers that they don’t need to figure it out on their own! Instead, they can use the writing prompt as an outline for their response. Encourage students to use each part of the question to structure their response, and to go in that order.
2. Write a clear introduction.
Use the introduction as an opportunity to outline the rest of the Extended Response. Teach writers to name the text, state their claim, and answer the question in 1-2 sentences.
3. Answer all parts of the question.
When studying released responses, often something that prevents students from getting full credit on extended response writing is that they forget to answer all parts of the question. Teach writers to go back and check off each part of the question after they’ve written their response to make sure they’ve fully answered each part.
4. Rely on your essay work.
No need to go into extended response writing cold! Support writers in transferring all that they know from essay writing by doing inquiry work. You might place an essay and extended response side by side asking, “What makes these two genres of writing similar? What makes them different?” In addition, pull charts from your essay writing units into test prep.
5. Explain and unpack evidence.
Help writers demonstrate their reading comprehension by teaching them to include transitional sentences that set up and unpack their text evidence. Before quoting or summarizing, get writers to explicitly tell readers why their evidence is important.
6. Extend your thinking in the conclusion.
To raise the level of extended response writing, teach students to extend their thinking at the end of their work. Making connections to themselves, the world, other texts, and real life demonstrates a deeper understanding of the text.
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Extended written response questions
Written response questions require an extended answer from students.
These questions often address higher order thinking skills and require students to recall or research information and apply that information in different ways.
Advantages and limitations
- Limitations
- Tests for higher order thinking skills and application of key content
- Allows for different and original responses – students compose rather than select
- Less time consuming to construct compared to other forms of assessment
- Minimise guessing
- Tests student ability to organise thoughts
- Allows opportunities to provide feedback on student progress
- Stimulates more broad study
- Can favour students with skilful writing
- Limits the amount of course content covered
- Requires an extensive amount of time to grade
- Grading can be subjective and unreliable
- Susceptible to academic misconduct through generative artificial intelligence tools
- Generally does not provide an objective measure of student ability and/or achievement
- Opportunity for bluffing, rambling, or going off on tangents if questions are misunderstood
Links to Theory
Questions that require a longer response often require students to utilise higher order thinking skills and relate their knowledge to different contexts. Bloom’s Taxonomy and SOLO Taxonomy are two underlying frameworks that support this.
SOLO Taxonomy
SOLO Taxonomy demonstrates five stages of learning where students develop more complex and integrated ideas and can apply concepts in new contexts the further along students are in their learning.
Image: Biggs, J., (1982) The SOLO Taxonomy. John Biggs https://www.johnbiggs.com.au/academic/solo-taxonomy/
Written response questions relate to the fourth and fifth elements of the SOLO Taxonomy – relational, where students apply knowledge for a purpose and extended abstract and explore new ways and avenues of applying knowledge.
Bloom’s Taxonomy
Blooms Taxonomy is a framework comprising six learning domains, categorised by the level of thinking skills they require. Knowledge and comprehension involve lower order thinking and are typically addressed using other assessment methods, whereas higher skills such as application, analysis, evaluation and synthesis are well suited to an extended response.
Image: Scholarly Community Encyclopedia (2022) Bloom’s Taxonomy Visual Guide https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/30767
Guidelines for constructing written response questions
Content - what will be assessed
Select the content and subject learning outcomes you are assessing. Are there certain skills that need to be addressed? Have students been assessed at a lower level on this content previously?
Product - what will be made
Think about what you would like the students to produce. Think about; the length of the response, the time available to complete the question, how you would like students to respond (verbal, written, video, etc.), what type of text students are to produce, the intended audience (supervisor, potential client, peers, etc.) and academic integrity. Make sure to consider the marking workload in this step.
Process - how will it be made
Consider how the students will complete the assessment. Think about: ideal steps/process, how to state clear and explicit instructions and avoid ambiguous terms and intimidating terminology.
Grading - how will it be graded
Consider what the desired product is. Think about: what you would expect to see in terms of structure, content, and language, how to make marking criteria clear and obvious for students and graders and develop opportunities to show and work through exemplars with students.
Review - how did it go
Upon completion, review the process and results. Use any insights learned to refine your assessment design. Ensure to receive feedback from all involved in the process – markers and students can provide a unique point of view that you may not have considered.
Example of an extended written response question
Below is an example of an extended written response question.
- Create a lesson planning framework, incorporating the topics discussed in this subject. Your framework should be a workable template that clearly reflects your own perspective and desired future work context.
- Justify your choices made in the framework by referencing the learning materials and at least 2 peer discussions. (300-400 words)
- Predict the impact the framework could have in your desired future work setting. (200-300 words)
Combatting generative artificial intelligence (AI) use
This example question uses elements that support academic integrity against generative AI generators by
- asking students to create a framework, where AI will only list components
- reflecting on specific peer discussions, particularly if these are listed and verified
- linking to a specific desired work context
See below how this example was created through the five-step process:
In PowerPoint format:
Extended written response questions worked example
In H5P format:
General Tips
- State what you want the students to do clearly.
- Indicate the desired length, weighting and, where appropriate, time spent on an item.
- Combine a lower-level question and a higher-level question to scaffold a response. e.g. State three impacts on iron levels in women and devise a general action plan for a potential client.
- Use stimulus such as case studies, sets of data, multi-modal media and other real-world reference material.
- Contextualise responses through student personal experience or subject specific knowledge.
- Attempt to write a response to your question – is it easy to understand? Perhaps, use generative AI tool and see what comes back.
- Seek feedback from peers, often they can pick up when questions are difficult to understand or time consuming to grade.
- When giving options, ensure they are equitable and fair in the grading process.
- Outline the specific areas you would like the students to address.
- Anchor problems in real life settings that students have an interest in – situated learning theory.
- Use current issues in the media and industry.
- Make sure students understand their responsibility for academic integrity.
- Provide students with a list of key verbs, such as examine and justify that will be used in questions so there is a common understanding: Common Instruction Words
Boud, D. and Associates (2010). Assessment 2020: Seven propositions for assessment reform in higher education. Sydney: Australian Learning and Teaching Council.
IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
Your extended response will be your written reasoning (giving examples from the texts) as to why you believe which one of the two authors provides the strongest evidence for their argument.
Supply-type items require students to produce the answer in anywhere from a single-word to a several page response. They are typical broken into three categories of either short answer, restricted response essay, and extended response essay.
May 2, 2018 · Use these five steps to create rigorous, high-interest cross-textual assignments that can be implemented all year long. STEP 1: Pick Two Interesting Texts that Share a Common Theme and Genre. Extended constructed responses offer a great opportunity to expose students to high-interest fiction and informational texts.
An extended response has the same basic structure as an essay — with an introduction, a body and a conclusion. Here’s a breakdown on how an extended response should be structured: Access our comprehensive guide to our High School Extended Responses structure and template here!
Below are 6 strategies to help you and your writers crush the Extended Response. By implementing these strategies, you can make writing extended responses more manageable and even enjoyable for your students. Remember, consistent practice and positive reinforcement are key to improvement.
So let's talk now about writing extended response items. First of all, what is it? Well, in most disciplines, the Extended Response, or ER item as I'll call it, OK-- there's usually essays or other written responses like . lab repor. or another kind of paragraph or two about something .
Write two essay questions using both an extended-response format and a restricted-response format. Your extended-response question should be targeted to measure a synthesis or evaluation objective, while the latter should be targeted to measure a comprehension, application, or analysis objective.
Written response questions require an extended answer from students. These questions often address higher order thinking skills and require students to recall or research information and apply that information in different ways.
May 2, 2018 · Prepare students for extended constructed response writing assessments with these steps. Rubrics, lesson ideas, and tips for improving student writing.