TEERs of Teacher Joy!

Last year, in fifth grade, I piloted the TEER strategy for answering short answer questions in response to literature.  TEER is an acronym to help students remember the four parts their answer needs to have.  Those parts are:

• TTQA (Turn the question around)
• Evidence (right from the book, including page number and quotation marks if not paraphrasing)
• Explanation (Why did you choose this as the most compelling evidence?)
• Restatement

With students a year younger in fourth grade, I found they needed a lot more structure.  Specifically they needed the actual words to use to signal both the evidence section and the explanation sections.  So I created a scaffolded form that helps students with language impairments create fantastic open response answers.  The words the students need are right next to the appropriate section, so students can easily access them. Why didn't I have them pre-printed so all they had to do is fill in the blank?  My mother, a sped Teacher of the Year, always taught me:

"Have students write what you want them to most remember." 

 

 

 

There certainly is a time and place for creativity in open response.  But when students are first learning the "nuts and bolts" of this specialized type of writing, they should not be creative.  Once they have learned the structure of open response, they can apply their own brand of creativity.