- Houston Independent School District
- Effective Practices
- I-3 Differentiation
- Open-Ended Responses
Professional Development
- PD Operations / HELC
- Design, Media, and Online Learning (DMOL)
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Effective Practices
- PL Toolkit
- PL-1 Develops Student Learning Goals
- PL-2 Data-driven instruction
- PL-3 Design Effective Lesson Plans, Units & Assessments
- I-1 Objective Driven Lessons
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I-2 Check for Understanding
- Assess Mastery
- Begin with the End
- Checkpoints
- Chunking Text
- Closure
- Cold Call
- Exit Ticket
- Graphic Organizer
- Guided Practice
- Non-Verbal Signals
- Open-Ended Responses
- Post It
- Randomizing Responses
- Right is Right
- Running Roster
- Stretch It
- Structured Peer Conversation
- Student Conferences
- Student-Generated Questions
- Teach Back
-
I-3 Differentiation
- Chunking Text
- Double Plan
- Exit Ticket
- Flexible Grouping
- Graphic Organizer
- Grappling
- HOT Question
- Independent Practice
- Leveled Text
- Multimedia
- Open-Ended Responses
- Post It
- Product Menus
- Right is Right
- Running Roster
- Stretch It
- Structured Peer Conversation
- Student-Generated Questions
- Take a Stand
- Tiered Assignments
- Workstations
- I-4 Higher Level Thinking
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I-5 Maximizing Instructional Time
- 100 Percent
- Academic Posture
- Call and Response
- Cold Call
- Do Now
- Entry Routine
- Exit Routine
- Job Assignments
- Material Organization
- Non-Verbal Interventions
- Non-Verbal Signals
- Open-Ended Responses
- Pacing Tools
- Right is Right
- Stretch It
- Strong Voice
- Student Conference
- Teach Back
- Tight Transitions
- Work the Clock
- Workstations
- I-6 Communicating Content/Concepts
- I-7 High Academic Expectations
-
I-8 Student Engagement
- Academic Posture
- Call and Response
- Closure
- Cold Call
- Do Now
- Engage and Connect
- Graphic Organizer
- HOT Question
- Independent Practice
- J-Factor
- Job Assignments
- Leveled Text
- Non-Verbal Signals
- Open-Ended Responses
- Product Menus
- Randomizing Responses
- Real-World Connections
- Reinforcers
- Structured Peer Conversation
- Student-Generated Questions
- Workstations
- Work Hard, Get Smart
- I-9 Classroom Management
- I-10 Classroom Climate
- Literacy Routines
- Academics
- Swivl Pilot Program
- eLearning
Open-Ended ResponsesDescription
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An Open-Ended Response is a meaningful answer to a question, task, or problem presented to students that has more than one possible answer. When teachers utilize this effective practice, students can provide a quality open-ended response clearly demonstrating an understanding of the content and an explanation or opinion that extends beyond basic understanding. Open-ended responses can be used to promote curiosity, reasoning ability, creativity, and student independence. This type of response allows for different levels of complexity allowing for the personalization of learning.
- Determine the lesson objective and what students need to master by the end of the lesson or unit.
- Create and post tasks that will encourage students to express their ideas, thoughts, and/or feelings based on knowledge of the content.
- Determine how student responses and/or work products will be assessed. The teacher may use an existing rubric, create a rubric, assign a completion grade, or have students complete a self-reflection tool.
- Assign open-ended tasks to students during and/or after the lesson. Allow time for students to generate and share their answers and products.
- Share expectations by modeling and/or presenting an open-ended response.
- Tell students how their answers and products will be assessed.
- Monitor work time and provide written or verbal feedback to promote reasoning ability.
- Assess student answers and products using the chosen assessment tool. Teacher-written or verbal feedback is essential in promoting reasoning ability.
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Alerts
A great way to check for alignment between the lesson objective and the open-ended task is to compare the verb in the objective with the verb in the task.
Traditional grading of open-ended responses may not be enough to capture student mastery, consider using rubrics and self-reflection to assess.
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Quick Tips
Because open-ended tasks can be challenging, make sure to validate all efforts by showing praise and recognition with verbal or written feedback.
Consider using open-ended tasks as a way to differentiate for students based on their ability and learning style.
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Other Strategies
Tiered Assignments
Tiered Assignments uses different assignments for different students or groups of students that have the same content and cover the same objectives, but the levels of tasks are varied according to student readiness.
Product Menus
Product Menus offer students a way to make decisions about what they will do in order to meet class requirements by providing various product options, much like a menu gives a customer many options at a restaurant.
Response Journals
Response journals can be used as a tool because there are no "right or wrong answers" in response journals. Give students blank pages/books that contain questions or sentence stems to help structure student responses. Students write freely to respond to the prompt with little or no guidance on how they must structure their responses.
Interactive Notebooks
Interactive Notebooks are used for class notes as well as for other activities where the student will be asked to express his/her own ideas and process the information presented in class. Notebooks help students to systematically organize their thoughts as they learn in a visual and linguistic manner. Notebooks become an active process and a portfolio on individual learning.
