Teaching the RACES Writing Strategy: A Simple Way to Support Constructed Response Writing 

Do your students ever answer reading questions with just a couple of words? 🙃 You’re not alone! That’s where the RACES writing strategy comes in.

RACES gives students a simple structure that takes them from a short, bare‑minimum answer to a complete response that actually uses text evidence.

It’s a strategy that really works. ✨

Here’s how you can introduce RACES in your classroom and help your students grow into confident, thoughtful writers!

What is the RACES Writing Strategy? 

RACES is an acronym that reminds students about the pieces of an excellent short constructed response. 

In other words, it reminds them what to include in the questions they are answering about something they have read. 

Here’s what each letter stands for: 

R – Restate the question 

Instead of jumping into answering the question, you begin your response by restating the question provided. 

I like to tell my students that I should be able to tell exactly what was asked, even if the question isn’t at the top of the paper. 

A – Answer the question

Next, answer the question. 

These two first parts (R and A) are generally combined to create one complete sentence. 

C – Cite Evidence 

Remind your students that for a response to be excellent, you need to be able to back up your answer. Include details or facts from the text that support the answer you just gave. 

This shows that you are connecting your answer to what you just read about. 

E – Explain Your Thinking

Explain how this evidence is connected to your answer. 

Why did you choose this part of the text to cite as backup for your answer?

S – Sum it Up

End with a conclusion statement that brings all of these parts together. 

Why Should You Bring RACES to Your Classroom?

As humans, we like to follow the easy path. 

Unfortunately, that means our students naturally want to write a simple, three-word answer to a question. 

And we know our students know more about what they are reading. They just need the support to learn how to write answers that display that knowledge. 

Additionally, using this method encourages your students to write responses to questions that include text evidence. This is a HUGE skill older elementary students are learning and need to be able to demonstrate. 

Finally, providing your students with this structure builds their confidence as writers. As your students start to see the amazing responses they write, they will start to see themselves as writers. 

Tips for Teaching RACES 

Figuring out how to teach the RACES writing strategy to your students doesn’t have to be complicated! 

Always start by modeling what you want your students to do. Show off the end goal, what their response will look like when they have learned all the parts of RACES. 

If you’d like a bulletin board example of a RACE response for yourself, check out this one! 

Depending on where your students are, it might be helpful to break each letter down into its own step. Teach your students how to accomplish that letter and practice it over and over and over again. Once your students have mastered that step, add the next one.

Once your students are doing multiple steps, encourage them to color-code their answers. This allows them to make sure they have all the parts they should, and helps them identify the different parts of their answer. 

Another tip is to provide sentence stems for your students to use, especially for the Cite, Explain, and Sum it up steps. These are higher-level tasks for your students to do, and it can be helpful to know how to start those sentences. 

Finally, use a RACES writing strategy display to give your students an easy reference to remember what each letter stands for. 

RACES Visual Display

If you’re hunting for a RACES display, you’re in luck! 

To make this strategy stick, I created a RACES bulletin board kit with posters and sentence starters that double as visual reminders. It will be a game changer for your writing time. 

Each display comes with the RACES posters that give a quick reminder of what happens in each stage. 

There are also speech bubbles with sentence starters so your students can easily pick how they want to get started. 

The best part? The speech bubbles are color-coordinated to match the step when students use them! 

If you want a simple, print-and-go visual to support your students with the RACES writing strategy, choose your favorite RACES display here! 

Looking for inspiration on how to support the ELA skills you’re teaching your students? Check out this ELA classroom makeover for ideas on other posters or resources you can add to your classroom!