What is an Open Response?
An Open Response is a piece of writing that you produce after reading a passage or short story. In an Open Response, you will answer a specific question and provide evidence from the reading that supports your answer.
There are three steps that you need to carry out in order to complete an Open Response:
1. Answer: Make a claim. Do you agree or disagree with the question?
2. Evidence: Find examples from the text that support your claim.
3. Explain: Show how your evidence proves that your claim is correct.
At this point, you may be wondering, "How is this different from a regular essay?" To put it simply, while an essay involves proving your opinion (also called your thesis!), an Open Response doesn't involve your opinion at all. Instead, it's an exercise to make sure that you understood the reading correctly.
Here are a few ways to tell the difference between an Open Response and a longer composition:
Start at the Answer page to learn about and practice forming claims, and then use the buttons and links to move through the steps of creating an Open Response.
There are three steps that you need to carry out in order to complete an Open Response:
1. Answer: Make a claim. Do you agree or disagree with the question?
2. Evidence: Find examples from the text that support your claim.
3. Explain: Show how your evidence proves that your claim is correct.
At this point, you may be wondering, "How is this different from a regular essay?" To put it simply, while an essay involves proving your opinion (also called your thesis!), an Open Response doesn't involve your opinion at all. Instead, it's an exercise to make sure that you understood the reading correctly.
Here are a few ways to tell the difference between an Open Response and a longer composition:
- Open Responses test how well you understood the reading, and long essays assess your writing skills
- Open Responses are about answering a question correctly, and long essays are about your thoughts
- Open Response answers are in the text, while long essays don't have a 'correct' answer
- Open Responses are supported with textual details, while long essays don't necessarily need quotations
Start at the Answer page to learn about and practice forming claims, and then use the buttons and links to move through the steps of creating an Open Response.