How do we help students respond fully to extended-response questions in a testing situation?

In the question above, "fully" is a key word. Here is a step-by-step strategy you can use to help your students respond fully to extended-response questions:

1. Help students understand that the test performance verbs they will likely see are analyze, compare, contrast, evaluate, explain, infer, predict, summarize, support, trace, illustrate, discuss, list, and justify. Familiarize your students with these words before putting them into practice questions. Then have students highlight or circle these words when taking practice tests to help them comprehend the question.
   
   

2. Help students identify "neon words and phrases." Neon words and phrases are those that students often overlook but that can affect how they comprehend the question.

   For example, my students were given this sample test question: "Use the selection to provide two reasons some people oppose limiting our use of fossil fuel." When I slightly rewrote the question to remove the word oppose ("Use the selection to provide two reasons some people want to limit our use of fossil fuel"), students answered the question beautifully. But when oppose was left in, very few students caught that one word that changed everything.

2. Examples of neon words and phrases are:

   like/dislike	effects/causes
   first/last	at the beginning
   different	at the end
   not	at the conclusion
   oppose	how did he/she/it change?
   event/action

   You teach neon words and phrases just like the performance verbs; make sure students understand them and can define them. Use the neon words over and over in daily assignments and practice tests so that students become familiar with them and can readily identify them. You might also instruct students to highlight or circle neon words and phrases when they appear in questions.

   Another way to familiarize students with neon words and phrases is to post them (and performance verbs, too) on a wall, bulletin board, or chart, to give students a quick reference to these important words.

3. Instruct students to read the question and make sure that they understand what it is asking. Help students to determine how many pieces of information are asked for. Remind them that a 2-point question generally asks for two pieces of information and a 4-point question generally requires four pieces of information. One suggestion is to have students underline and number the things they are being asked to do.
   
   
4. Encourage students to think their response through before they begin writing. Students who take time to think about their response will be more apt to reread the passage for accurate details and examples and consequently will be more likely to write a more complete response.
   
   
5. Impress upon students the necessity of giving examples from the passage to support their answers and the importance of making sure they answer all parts of the question.
   
   

The Ohio Resource Center publishes an online magazine, Adolescent Literacy In Perspective, which features columns about the OGT and ways to improve student performance. You can find Adolescent Literacy In Perspective at http://www.ohiorc.org/adlit. In the September 2004 issue, Carol Brown Dodson wrote "A Look at the OGT" column entitled " Analyzing a Question." Within the article, you can find links to actual extended-response questions and sample responses. To find other "A Look at the OGT" columns, see the Adolescent Literacy In Perspective archives.

What can I do to help students learn critical vocabulary in my content area?

Lack of vocabulary can be a huge roadblock to understanding and learning in the content areas. Vocabulary–building strategies that offer a before–, during–, and after–reading component can be very helpful because of the continuity and reinforcement they provide.

You will find good ideas for all three components in Karla Hieatt Bisig's "Vocabulary and Word Study." Bisig suggests that before you begin a unit, give students a list of critical words and ask them to predict what they think the words mean. Next (the "during" part), have students read the selection and use context clues to make a guess about what they now think the words mean. At this stage, students write how they arrived at the new definitions. What clues did they use? When students finish the text (the "after" component), they can use a dictionary to confirm the definitions. If the students have been mistaken in their definitions, they go back to the text to search for the context clues they missed.

How can I help students become familiar with their textbook at the beginning of the year?

Scavenger hunts are an engaging and powerful way to introduce new texts to students, no matter what the subject. In "Getting to Know Your Middle Grades Mathematics Textbook," teacher Diane Kahle shares a ten–question scavenger hunt that she uses with her required math text to help students learn how their text works and what kinds of information and support it offers. The questions can easily be adapted to fit any text.

I use scavenger hunts in teaching a course on children's literature to undergraduate students. In a slight variation of the scavenger hunt, I ask partners to work collaboratively because I find that peer discussion increases their knowledge of the text as well as their interest in the content. Like Kahle, I design questions that draw attention to features that are repeated in every chapter; and I require students to develop questions based on their particular interests. I've found that the following set of questions seems to spark a great deal of discussion:

Find an illustration or graphic in the first three chapters that looks interesting to you. What can you learn from the graphic and related caption? What questions arise from studying this illustration?

Questions like these, which engage students in analyzing their texts, help them not only to develop some interest in the content but also to set expectations about what will be covered in the course.