An RRWE is a reading-response with evidence question.
Students are learning that when they write about their reading, in most cases, they'll need to provide evidence from the text to support their ideas.
This will also assist the boys and girls in Math when they are asked to "explain your thinking".
Asking students to provide evidence from the text teaches them to think critically about what they've read and to assess that information based on whether or not it suits their needs. It also allows children to use what they already know about a subject and choose information from the text they deem appropriate to help support their opinion or idea. This all helps students to prepare for later grades and assignments where the evidence gathering process can be the biggest component of their assignment.
Not only does this process of responding to RRWEs help children to think more deeply about a text, it will assist them when it comes time for them to write their own stories and reports.
At this grade level, all RRWEs begin the same way by stating the purpose for writing: Today I'm going to tell you____________. From there, students move on to providing evidence for their ideas or opinion. They cite the text by writing: I know this because in the text it says ____________.
At this point, students provident the necessary evidence and then conclude their paragraph with a closing statement: Now you know more about ____________.
The next step in this type of writing is for the student to include their own additional information. We call this "adding a plus". A plus is any relevant prior knowledge the student might have about the subject. I'll post later on about RRWEPs or reading-response with evidence-plus questions.
You can read more about plusses here, in a post from last week.
What's a plus?
