C-Circle the Bossy Word. What Word Tells You to Do Something?

CUB STRATEGY

C-Circle the bossy word. What word tells you to do something?

To help you underline, write the word what on top of each circle.

Now ask yourself the questions in your head. Explain what? Identify what? The answer to those questions is what you underline. (Students have a hard time figuring out what to underline. This helps!)

U-Underline the answer to the question what

The last part of the CUB strategy is bracket. Bracket key words, phrases, names, numbers, and any thing else that would be relevant in answering the question.

Once you have CUBed the open response, you should have a good feel for what the passage will be about. Students should already be able to make predictions about what they are about to read. The next step that I have found helpful is having the students immediately go and ‘set-up’ the open response. This helps students because they are making it fill in the blank.

Now since the open response is “set-up” it is time to read. As the students read, they need to highlight the answers to the open response. When they are finished reading, they should simply be able to fill in the answers.

When they are finished with the open response, they should answer the multiple choice questions. I always tell my students to do these last. Think about those students who are timed when taking the test. If we tell them they have 5 minutes left, then they could easily work the multiple choice questions. Even if they have to guess, they will have a chance at the right answer. If we called 5 minutes and they were just reading the passage for multiple choice answers and haven’t even really looked at the open response, chances are they will not even get to it. If they do get to it, they won’t have a very complete answer. Rationally, it makes the most sense to do the multiple choice questions last.

Here are some open response stems to practice the CUB strategy and boxes to practice setting them up.

Remember the magic number is 4. If there is not a number in the prompt, always try to give 4 parts to your answer.