The State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness / STAAR® Program Redesign and how Short, Short, BIG! aligns.

Learning to read well means grounding reading, writing and speaking in evidence from text.

• Reading and writing are reciprocal processes. Writing about what you read strengthens comprehension.

• By grounding the discussion in the text, all students are given an equal opportunity to engage.

• Support knowledge building in content-rich text, and point students toward the most important parts of the text.

• The length and quality of student recall improves when responding to content-based lessons grounded in text.

• The ability to cite evidence differentiates strong from weak student performance on National Assessment Education Progress, AP Exams, and other college-readiness assessments.

Feedback from educators informed the main components of the STAAR redesign.

In effective classrooms, teachers are…

Asking students to write about what they read using evidence from text…

…and avoid less effective practices by… not just reading without writing.

Write a well-organized informational essay that uses specific evidence from the text to support your answer.

Remember to —

• Clearly state your central idea

• Organize your writing

• Develop your ideals in detail

• Use evidence from the selection in your response

• Use correct spelling, capitalization, punctuation and grammar

Is Short, Short, BIG! aligned to the TEKS? Yes!