We had a great time at The Literacy Cooperative of Greater Cleveland’s training yesterday. Participants shared resources and instructional strategies while analyzing the requirements of the GED Test Extended Responses.
Our take-away: any points at all on the Extended Response means we are preparing our adult education students to pass the GED Test!
I chose a selection of test-taker responses provided by GED Testing Service that participants read aloud (game show style!) to understand the threshold for scoring points in the three traits, particularly “Creation of Arguments and Use of Evidence.”
We discovered that if you use evidence without citing it properly, or if you analyze the passages but don’t use that to support an argument…then it will be in vain!
No points for you!
Thanks to @StAugLearnCenter and @MayDuganCenter for tweeting these photos.
In our discussion of instructional strategies, we focused on the reading and writing skills that are also measured on the rest of the Reasoning through Language Arts and Social Studies test, not just the Extended Response.
Check out the awesome lists and examples that we developed:
A little more detail on that last one:
Reading Skills
- comparing statistics
- comprehension
- following directions
- vocabulary
- timed reading
- main ideas
- supporting details
- close reading
Writing Skills
- time management
- formal style
- plan your writing
- use proper conventions
- express your ideas
- proper and varied sentence structure
- logical argument
- transitional words and phrases
Instructional Activities
- graphic organizers
- sentence template
- discuss before writing
- verbal analysis
- web scavenger hunt
- real life examples
- authentic materials (local newspapers, SCOTUS summaries)
Thanks again to a fantastic group!
I look forward to going into more depth about the Social Studies Extended Response at COABE on Wednesday, 4/22 2:00pm-3:15pm in the L3 Granite A. Let me know if I’ll see you in Denver! As always, you can find the session posted right here on my blog.
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