R.A.C.E. Write Strategy
R = Restate the Question
The first step is to change the question into a statement. Students need to remove the question word like who, what, when, where, or why but restate the key words in the question. For example, if the question was “Why did Jill decide to give her mother a jewelry box?” the answer would start this way, “Jill decided to give her mother a jewelry box because…”
A = Answer the Question
After restating the question, the second step is to finish the sentence and answer the question. Students may use their own knowledge as well as inferences from the text to identify the answer. A few tips for this… Number one, it’s important that they make sure to answer the specific question being asked. Number two, they also need to answer every part of the question. Sometimes questions have more than one part. Finally, they need to list the character’s name first, before using a pronoun like he/she/they.
C = Cite Text Evidence
First, students need to find relevant evidence to support their answer. Then they need to write it correctly using a sentence stem like… According to the text… or The author stated… or In the second paragraph, the author mentioned… and so on. Students then should quote the text exactly as it is written and use quotation marks around this evidence.
E = Explain What it Means
The last part of the constructed response is where students tell how their text evidence supported their answer. Again, some simple sentence starters could be: This shows… or This proves… or This is a good example of… or This means that… and so on.