Grade 11

Explanatory

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Sunflower

Conventions

Evidence/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

There is a run-on sentence (one in which the new-to-grade skill semi-colon might have been employed) in the third paragraph: “They do not cause harm to the enviorment, in fact it will benefit our atmosphere and decrease global warming caused greatly by the use of oil dependent cars.”
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There are errors with verbs including with verb tense (e.g., “we have turn [turned] to new alternatives and hybrids”), and switches with verb mood (“If ships were to utilize this oil instead, oil leaks will [would] not harm animals as much”). There are occasional errors with unclear/misplaced modifiers (e.g., “Researching their nutrious content with high amoutns of oil and protein, the university has decided that it sunflowers …”) and unclear and/or agreement errors with pronouns (“Overall the sunflower can provide great things as long as we use its properties. They’re also renewable meaning we could reuse it”). There are errors with relative adjectives with (and the correct use of a comma with) which/that: “…benefit the Earth by lowering pollution which [that] is caused by the current fuel used for automobiles” and “…the facility grinds the wast rpoducts and presses the seeeds into small pellets [should have a comma after pellets] which a[re] fed to a gasifier chamber.”
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There are many spelling errors (e.g., “suprisingly,”“Philipines,” “nutrious,” “enviorment,” “downton,” “mutiple,” “wast,” “rpoducts,” “alot,” “continously,” and “delcious”).

There are a few errors in capitalization at the beginning of sentences (e.g., “whether roasting their delcious seeds…” and “why not use something beneficial to our society …” and “to convert seeds to useable oil…” and “this process is alot faster and cheaper…”).  Capital letters are also randomly and inaccurately used with sunflower and sunflower oil.
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There are missing commas after introductory elements (e.g., “During the 70’s the Philipines enjoyed their surpluses of Sunflowers,” “Since they are known for their oil content they might as well be used for oil purposes,” and “Overall the sunflower can provide great things as long as we use its properties.”). There are missing apostrophes in the word “theyre” at three different times within the response.

The essay relies on support from two sources (Source 1 and Source 2).  Each of the two body paragraphs integrates (and attempts to synthesize) some evidence from both sources.Some citation/attribution is attempted (e.g., “&#8230;(Sunflowers in the philipines)” should be “Biofuel from Sunflower” or “Source 1.” Sunflowers in the Phillipines was a source subtopic, not a title). Some evidence is accurately quoted from sources.

Some elaboration is via source summary, often paraphrasing information at the sentence level (e.g., “…as part of daily consumption” vs. “not for the edible oil”). There are also some inferences, sometimes text-based (e.g., “switching to Sunflower oil will actually benefit the Earth by lowering pollution which is caused by the current fuel used for automobiles”) but sometimes of questionable accuracy (“If ships were to utilize this oil instead, oil leaks will not harm animals as much”). Some of these inferences could be a result of apparent confusion between consumable sunflower oil and sunflower-sourced biodiesel fuel.

Overall, the language use is adequate although generalities can sometimes obscure meaning (e.g., “Overall the sunflower can provide great things as long as we use its properties”) or be too obvious (“They’re also renewable meaning we could reuse it and they could be used for multiple reasons”) or somewhat inaccurate (“mining for oil”). The essay shows an awareness of appropriate explanatory style.

The introduction develops a thesis, moving from the general (“Everything is connected into a whole. One small factor can greatly change the community and our lifestyles…”) to the more specific (“As problem solvers, we have turn to new alternatives and hybrids to help save our planet and corporations.”). This is followed by a subtle but clear roadmap for the essay: “Sunflower seeds are a better alternative to use to create biofuels because of their oil rich content, theyre inexpensive to cultivate, and they work efficiently as replacements for gasoline oil.” The introduction is more effective than the conclusion, which provides unfounded inferences (“Sunflower oil is the solution to our global warming problems,”  “Sunflower seeds will help even more than the inventions of hybrid or electric cars,” and “…will never be extinct…”).

The overall progression of ideas from beginning to end is adequate although body paragraph 1 (paragraph 2) is more focused than body paragraph 2 (paragraph 3).

The essay utilizes some transitional strategies (e.g., “It is easy to see&#8230;”, “In fact&#8230;”, “Overall&#8230;”) to connect ideas.

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An annotation is the educator’s explanation of how a portion of the student’s response relates to the rubric and contributes to that trait’s score. For example, the educator might explain how the response meets the expectations of a specific score point. An annotation can also describe aspects of a student response that relate to multiple score points on the rubric to demonstrate nuance when determining a score.

Annotation

One of three traits scored for the ELA performance task full write, this trait measures a student’s ability to demonstrate command of grade-level conventions of standard English: grammar usage (including sentence formation), capitalization, punctuation, and spelling.

This trait measures students’ ability to select and integrate details that support, explain, illustrate, or develop ideas. Students should elaborate these details—that is, explain and connect them, guided by the writing purpose and audience needs.
For informative/explanatory and opinion/argumentative writing purposes, these details come from source materials.
For narrative writing, this trait is called Development/Elaboration, and students are expected to integrate and develop grade-appropriate story elements such as descriptive details and dialogue. For these tasks, events and experiences are inspired by source materials.

This trait measures students’ ability to establish and sustain a focus for the writing. This focus should be consistent with the task’s designated purpose and the intended audience. Strong introductions and conclusions (or, for narrative writing, beginnings and endings) and transitions help to create coherence.

Performance tasks measure a student’s ability to demonstrate critical-thinking and problem-solving skills by challenging students to apply their knowledge and skills to complex, real-world problems. In the performance task, students are presented with a collection of questions and activities connected to a single theme or scenario. These activities ask students to demonstrate capacities such as depth of understanding, writing and research skills, and complex analysis, which cannot be adequately assessed with traditional assessment questions. Performance tasks are taken on a computer (but are not computer adaptive) and take students one to two class periods to complete.

Performance Task

The prompt is the text provided to the student that requests their response. It includes some contextual information, but also includes a specific task that students complete in their writing response.

Prompt

For a deeper dive into the content behind this student response, navigate to the Sample Items Website to access the writing prompt or visit the Content Explorer to learn more about this content area.

Prompt & Target

“Purpose” is the context for a piece of writing, or what the writer intends to accomplish. Students write texts with the following purposes:
<ul>
<li>Narrative (grades 3–8): tell a story</li>
<li>Informational (grades 3–5): present facts or data using source material</li>
<li>Explanatory (grades 6–11): explain a topic or concept by analyzing source materials</li>
<li>Opinion (grades 3–5): present and defend a position</li>
<li>Argumentative (grades 6–11): present an argument using research to form and support claims</li>
</ul>
Purposes have subtle differences depending on grade, and each writing purpose has its own scoring rubric.

Purpose

This text was written by a student in response to a Performance Task writing prompt.

Response

A rubric is a set framework for scorers to reference when determining the quality of student writing. Each trait has its own rubric, and every point value is defined in detail with examples of what to expect from student writing at each level.

Rubric

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Sample Term One

Sample Term Two

Traits are different dimensions of a student response that educators evaluate when scoring. For example, an educator will assess grammar and spelling as part of the Conventions trait (maximum of two score points) but not take grammar or spelling into account when assessing the other traits. This approach ensures that scorers evaluate student writing from multiple angles.

Example for Grade 11: Explanatory – Sunflower - ID: 1184

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