Today, I’m excited to share a valuable tool that can take your students’ STAAR ECR (Extended Constructed Response) game to the next level. We all know that acing the STAAR test requires attention to detail, and one of the keys to success is a well-organized, thoughtfully developed response. That’s where my STAAR ECR checklist comes into play.
Hey, I’m Angela, the teacher behind Custom Classroom by Angela.
Catch the video or keep on reading – the choice is yours!
STAAR ECR Checklist
This checklist is designed to help students ensure they’ve included everything necessary to score those coveted 5 points on their STAAR ECR prompts. It’s all about making the scoring rubric crystal clear. Let’s break it down.
Organizing and Development of Ideas
First, there are three points up for grabs in the “Organizing and Development of Ideas” category. We’ve color-coded these elements to make them visually stand out.
Controlling Idea (Green): The backbone of your response. Does your answer align with the main question?
Organization: It’s composed of three parts: Introduction & Conclusion – purple, Transitions – orange, and Staying on Topic – turquoise. Make sure your intro and conclusion are spot-on, your transitions flow smoothly, and you never stray from the topic.
Text Evidence (Red): To earn those points, your response needs to include relevant, quoted evidence from the text. It’s essential to support your answers.
But it also must be Clearly Explain (Pink): The pink section focuses on how well you explain your evidence. It’s not enough to include quotes; you need to show you understand their relevance.
Next up, we’ve got the “Expression.” We use a light blue color to represent this category. It’s all about making sure their ideas are clear and easy to follow.
Conventions
Finally, we move on to the last part of the checklist, which accounts for the remaining 2 points: “Conventions.” Students need to check for sentence construction, punctuation, grammar, capitalization, and spelling. This is where they ensure their response has only a few errors that do not impact the clarity of their writing.
But here’s the unique value of this checklist – it’s directly based on the STAAR grading rubric. This means that it covers precisely what the graders are looking for. When you use this checklist, you can be confident that students are including everything they need to get a full 5 points.
Using this checklist, students can methodically go through their responses, making sure they’ve addressed all the essential elements. It also helps them visualize their responses using color coding, making it clear where they may need to improve.
And here’s the best part – you can get this ECR checklist for free! Just click the link in the description below and empower your students to tackle ECR prompts with confidence.
So, whether you’re a teacher looking to enhance your students’ skills or a student striving for that perfect STAAR score, this checklist is a valuable tool to have in your educational arsenal.
Happy teaching, and here’s to helping your students shine on the STAAR test!
To learn more about the STAAR ECR writing, check out my video playlist or read more in my ECR blog category.
