A Creative, Fun, and Engaging Way to Teach Your Students to Restate a Question
Do you have students who jump right into their answer without referencing the question?
Or students that write just one word answers?
Me too!
As a seventh grade teacher, I thought it would be second nature for my students to restate a question when responding.
It’s not.
I didn’t think I would need to reteach this skill at this level.
I do.
It’s all good, though, because spending 20ish minutes explicitly teaching students how to restate a question will save you so much time down the road!
You will not have to spend hours writing comments like, “Make sure to always restate the question” and you won’t lose your mind over grading one word, incomplete sentences.
How to Teach It:
1. Put your students in groups of 2-4 and give them a small whiteboard and dry erase marker. (I keep a set of these whiteboards on my tables for activities like this. That way you’re not having to constantly pass them out.)
2. Give students a fun question like, Where did Maddie find her baby unicorn?
3. As a class, underline words the question they can use in their response.
4. Tell your students their answer will be correct as long as they use the words underlined to restate the question. They can be as creative as they want to be!
5. After they write their responses, have students circle their basic answer. This will help students see the difference between just providing a one or two word response and one where you restate the question.
6. Go over some of the responses. This is the fun part because you get to see their creativity! Make sure when they are sharing, they include the restated part of the question.
7. Now repeat the process, but with a different question. Give a question where the students have to practice moving the words around in order to have it make sense as a sentence. For example, What did Maddie do with the baby unicorn after she found it?
8. Do this with more time as a group, and then transition to independent practice so you can get a better idea of who is getting it and who needs a little more guidance.
9. If you need a writing sample, this is a great way to start a creative writing story! Students can pick one of the questions they answered and turn it into a story.
Doing it this way really helps the concept stick. In fact, I made a YouTube video about this strategy and one of my students commented, "I remember Maddie and her baby unicorn!" 🤣
Resources to Help You
RTQT Format Blog Post
This is part of a lesson I do on how to write quality constructed response questions using the RTQT method.
RTQT Mini Lesson on TPT
This activity is part of the RTQT mini-lesson.
ELA Unlimited
You can get the complete Writing Quality Constructed Responses using the RTQT method lesson, along with other text evidence resources, mini-lessons, and quests in Section 1, Inference and Text Evidence.
