English Language ArtsEnglishMiddle schoolKey Stage 3
How to teach the RACE strategy for constructed response
The RACE writing strategy has students restate the question, answer it, cite evidence from the text and explain how the evidence supports the answer. This page explains each step, with a free activity where Sparky checks each part of a student's constructed response in turn.
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A student can name the author's claim and still back it with "because it's dangerous" instead of a line from the text. One score on a worksheet doesn't tell her which of the three parts fell short, and the teacher has to wait until the stack is graded to find out who skipped the quote.
The RACE writing strategy for constructed response
RACE is a four-step routine for answering a question about a text in writing: Restate the question, Answer the question, Cite evidence, and Explain or expand on your thinking (Edutopia).
- Restate: turn the question into the start of the answer. "What is the author's claim?" becomes "The author claims that..."
- Answer: say what you think in one sentence.
- Cite: copy the exact words from the text, in quotation marks.
- Explain: say in your own words how the quote proves the answer, without repeating the quote.
In the Flint activity, each student names something they care about, Sparky writes them a short article, and they answer one question about the author's claim. Sparky checks the answer, the quote and the explanation one at a time, the A, C and E of RACE, and the rubric scores each of the three separately, where a graded worksheet gives one score for the whole answer. A student who paraphrases instead of quoting gets the paragraph number to go back to, and a student whose explanation repeats the quote gets asked how the quote proves the claim. The rubric doesn't score Restate as its own part.
Nadia's article about heading the ball
Nadia is a middle schooler who plays travel soccer as a midfielder. She reads well and finds the author's claim quickly. She tends to explain a reason in her own words instead of quoting the text.
Every student in the class gets the same greeting, the same question and the same three parts to write: the answer, evidence quoted from the article, and an explanation. Each student names something they care about, so Sparky writes each one a different article, and Sparky's next message depends on which part that student just wrote.
Nadia
Sparky
Nadia
i play travel soccer. im a midfielderSparky
Should Young Soccer Players Head the Ball?
1. Heading the ball is a classic part of soccer, but many experts now argue that players under 14 should not be allowed to do it. The risk of brain injury is too high, and youth soccer organizations should ban heading for young players.
2. Research on youth athletes shows that repeated hits to the head, even small ones, can damage the developing brain.
3. In 2020, England's Football Association banned heading in training for players under 12. These decisions by major soccer organizations show that the danger is real and widely recognized.
4. Some argue that heading is a key skill and that players need to learn it young. But skill development is not worth permanent brain damage. Players can still become excellent midfielders, and complete players, without heading the ball during their youth years.
Question: What is the author's claim? Use evidence from the passage to explain why the author believes it. A full answer has three parts: the answer, evidence (a quote from the passage in quotation marks) and an explanation of how that quote supports the answer.
Nadia
the author thinks kids under 14 shouldnt be allowed to head the ball because its dangerous for your brainSparky
Nadia
it says that hitting your head over and over can hurt your brainSparky
Nadia
"repeated hits to the head, even small ones, can damage the developing brain" this shows that heading can damage your brainSparky
Nadia
kids brains are still growing so even small hits add up over a season. if heading can hurt a brain that isnt done growing, then the safe thing is to wait until youre older. thats why the author wants a ban until 14Understanding check
Nadia
the author thinks the other side is wrong because "skill development is not worth permanent brain damage." so even if heading is a skill, getting hurt is worse than missing practiceSparky
Nadia
paragraph 3 says "In 2020, England's Football Association banned heading in training for players under 12." if big soccer countries are banning it too, the people who say kids need to practice heading young are going against what the soccer organizations decidedSparky
Answered without a quote, found the evidence in paragraph 2, then backed a harder answer with two paragraphs
Nadia is an example student, and Sparky's replies are shortened.
When Nadia submits, Flint grades her chat against the activity's rubric, one score for each part, and links each point in her feedback to the message it came from.
What Nadia sees after she submits
A separate score for the answer, the evidence and the explanation
Evidence scored Proficient, the rubric level for a student who needed a reminder to quote, because Nadia paraphrased before she quoted. Each underlined phrase jumps to the message it describes. The feedback text is shortened.
What Flint did for Nadia
- Sparky wrote Nadia an article about heading the ball because she plays travel soccer.
- When Nadia gave a reason in her own words, Sparky named paragraph 2 and asked for the exact words, without giving her the quote.
- When her first explanation repeated the quote, Sparky asked how the quote proves the claim, and she wrote her own reasoning.
- Once all three parts held up, Sparky asked a harder question that needed evidence from two paragraphs.
- After she submitted, the rubric scored her answer, evidence and explanation separately, and her feedback linked to the message where she paraphrased instead of quoting.
A teacher can't do this by hand for 30 students, and Sparky does it in every student's chat.
The activity page shows which part the class is missing
While the class works, Needs attention shows the teacher which student is stuck and on which message. After three or more students submit, activity analytics lists what the class did well, where students fell short, and a follow-up to practice next, with a button to create it.
Example activity page
After an English class writes their constructed responses
The school and students are made up for this page. Click any student to read their chat and their scores for each part.
Set up the activity for free
The constructed response activity is in Flint's public library, with the rubric, Sparky's guidelines and the greeting already written. Open it, select Use activity to copy it into a free Flint account, and assign it to a class. Each student names their own interest, so the activity needs no reading prepared in advance.
For more English activities, see Flint for English language arts.
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