Grade 4

Informational

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Animal Habitats

Conventions

Evidence/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

The third of the four sentences in this response is not a correctly formed sentence.

There are no grade 4 errors with punctuation (the unnecessary apostrophes in &#8220;place’s,&#8221; &#8220;tool’s,&#8221; and &#8220;Animal’s&#8221; are noted under grammar usage).

There are multiple places in the brief response where the student unnecessarily capitalizes the first letter of words (“Desert’s,” “Animal’s,” and “Plant’s”).

There are repeated errors using possessives for what should be plural nouns (e.g., “place’s,” “tool’s,” “Plant’s,” etc.).

There are a couple of spelling errors – “ho” should be “hot” and “the have” should be “they have” in the third sentence.

The response includes minimal details from the available information, and those that are included just restate or copy information from the sources (e.g., &#8220;bottom of the sea…is as dark as night&#8221;; &#8220;Desert’s air is dry&#8221;; &#8220;…people can live in dry place’s because the have tool’s&#8221;).

Source details, which are unattributed, come only from source #1.

There is no attempt to elaborate or develop the evidence used.

The vocabulary is repetitive and vague (e.g., &#8220;people,&#8221; &#8220;place&#8217;s&#8221;).

Although the response reflects the topic, there is little purpose-specific focus and no information about how animals survive in difficult environments.

Connections between ideas are unclear (e.g., as presented, there is no clear relationship between having tools and &#8220;dry place&#8217;s&#8221;).

There is no identifiable introduction or conclusion.

There is little or no discernible organizational structure.

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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 4: Informational – Animal Habitats - ID: 3941

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