After teaching secondary ELA for five years, I noticed that many of my students struggled with all or some of the following:
Because so many of my students were struggling with the same areas across all of my classes, I decided to create a constructed response strategy that addressed the issues my students were having, but also could be used as a writing strategy for high school students in general:
Restate
The first step of this writing strategy for high school students is to help them start their response.
The RASIE Method calls for students to restate the question by using vocabulary from the prompt to start their sentence!
For an example, let’s use a sample prompt for the novel Of Mice and Men.
Prompt: What is your first impression of Lennie?
“My first impression of Lennie…
Answer
Next, students answer the question.
“My first impression of Lennie is that he is very child-like due to his mental disability.”
Support
To strengthen their response students must find evidence supporting their answer, emphasizing that they cannot start a sentence with a quote!
On page four Steinbeck writes, “Lennie, who had been watching, imitated George exactly.”
Identify
After noticing how many students summarized the quote instead of explaining how the quote supported their answer, I had them identify words or phrases in their evidence that helped to support their answer.
“imitated George exactly”
Explain
Once students identify words or phrases from their evidence, they have to explain how those words or phrases support their response.
The phrase “imitated George exactly” shows Lennie’s child-like nature because children often imitate those they look up to or admire, and Lennie is acting just like a child copying everything George is doing.
Altogether the response would read:
My first impression of Lennie is that he is very child-like due to his mental disability. On page four Steinbeck writes, “Lennie, who had been watching, imitated George exactly.” The phrase “imitated George exactly” shows Lennie’s child-like nature because children often imitate those they look up to or admire, and Lennie is acting just like a child copying everything George is doing.
After implementing this writing strategy in my classroom, I saw a huge difference in the responses of my students.
Many students draw a blank when trying to start a response and by having a simple reminder that they can use words from the prompt to help them, it took less time for them to figure out how they wanted to start their first sentence!
Before using this method, many of my students would have written, “The quote supports my response because Lennie imitated George.” for the “Explain” part of The RASIE Response Method.
The simple step of breaking down the quote to see the specific words or phrases that support their response really helped them to move from summary to actual analysis!
So, if you are struggling trying to teach students how to structure their responses, The RASIE Response Method is one of the best writing strategies for high school students you NEED to be using in you classroom!
Cookie Type Duration Description __cfduid 1 11 months The cookie is set by CloudFare. The cookie is used to identify individual clients behind a shared IP address d apply security settings on a per-client basis. It doesnot correspond to any user ID in the web application and does not store any personally identifiable information. cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement 0 11 months This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The purpose of this cookie is to check whether or not the user has given their consent to the usage of cookies under the category 'Advertisement'. cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics 0 11 months This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The purpose of this cookie is to check whether or not the user has given the consent to the usage of cookies under the category 'Analytics'. cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary 0 1 hour This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The purpose of this cookie is to check whether or not the user has given the consent to the usage of cookies under the category 'Necessary'. viewed_cookie_policy 0 1 hour The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
The Pinterest tag is used to track actions people take on the website after viewing our Promoted Pins. It enables us to gather audience insights, measure out return on ad spend, and learn which ads lead to more conversions and how people engage with the website.Cookie Type Duration Description _fbp 0 2 months This cookie is set by Facebook to deliver advertisement when they are on Facebook or a digital platform powered by Facebook advertising after visiting this website. fr 1 2 months The cookie is set by Facebook to show relevant advertisments to the users and measure and improve the advertisements. The cookie also tracks the behavior of the user across the web on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. Pinterest Tag third party
The Pinterest tag is used to track actions people take on the website after viewing our Promoted Pins. It enables us to gather audience insights, measure out return on ad spend, and learn which ads lead to more conversions and how people engage with the website.Cookie Type Duration Description _ga 0 2 years This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, camapign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assigns a randoly generated number to identify unique visitors. _gat_gtag_UA_143617306_1 0 1 minute Google uses this cookie to distinguish users. _gid 0 1 day This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form. Pinterest Tag third party