At the beginning of each year, I teach my students the RACE writing strategy. I find that many times, as students reach middle school, they lack the ability to fully explain and cite evidence from the text. While the ability to cite evidence is a key standard, it is also an important skill when writing Text Dependent Analysis essays and Argumentative essays.

RACE Writing

The acronym RACE stands for the four key components of this writing strategy. When put together, they allow the student to form a thesis and main idea for their writing, answer the prompt, and fully explain their reasoning. They do this by:

• R: Restating the question being asked
• A: Answering the question being asked
• C: Citing evidence from the text that supports the answer
• E: Explaining the evidence’s connection to the answer

When teaching writing, it helps to start with this writing strategy first and foremost. I do this before teaching Argumentative writing where I teach my Quotation Sandwich. I then lead into the Text Dependent Analysis which is on their state standardized test. Over the years, I have found that this scaffolding of instruction works each and every time.

The hardest habit to break with students is having them start off with “Yes” or “No” when answering questions. They don’t want to include the question. They usually want to dive in, answer simply, and move on to the next task without fully completing the first task. Learning to restate the question is a foreign concept that needs to be addressed immediately. The best way to teach this is to have them remove the words that make this a question and allow them to connect their answer to their restatement if needed. Explicit modeling is best in this strategy. The student will need to be shown multiple question combination. Plus, the teacher will need to model each one in order to avoid the inevitable short phrased answer.

For example, if the question is how does the author reveal the theme of the story, then the restatement would be “The author reveals the theme of the story through…”

What grade levels?

The RACE Writing strategy is not only for middle school, but it can be used at any grade level. The ability to cite evidence to support reasoning is a skill all students need. Using the formula for RACE writing will have students building concise answers to questions in all classes, and not just ELA. How often do you need to provide evidence when answer history questions or science questions?

Overall I feel that students benefit from learning this writing strategy. Students gain a precise formula for answering questions, and build thinking skills that will benefit them when persuasive writing.

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