Grade 4

Informational

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Animal Habitats

Conventions

Evidence/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

The response fails to begin with a sentence. Because the line makes little sense as written, it is difficult to assess if it’s a run-on, an attempted title, or fragment fused with a sentence, or something else.

There are a few punctuation errors, mostly commas missing to separate compound independent clauses (e.g., “…animals escape the heat…and they come out at night;” and “Well the cati has long roots&#8230;and they suck up water&#8230;”). There is also a missing apostrophe (“ill”) for the contraction &#8220;I’ll.&#8221;

There are some capitalization errors (e.g., “of cake. let me tell you” and “in the world? well in my apinion”).

There are errors with frequently confused words: &#8220;There&#8221; should be &#8220;their&#8221; in several places throughout the response, and “its” should be “it’s” in the final sentence.

There are many spelling errors (e.g., “acutluly,” “peie,” and “catis”).

The response integrates a limited number of specific details from the available source materials.

Source details are unattributed and come from only one source (source #1).

Attempts at developing details are minimal and unexplained, contributing more to confusion than to development (e.g., &#8220;Earth must is actluly like peie of cake&#8221;). Other attempts at developing details are limited to conversational phrases such as &#8220;You ask how water gets into the cacti?&#8221; While these may be stylistically effective, as presented here they do not function well as elaboration.

With few exceptions (e.g., &#8220;suck up&#8221; and &#8220;rich sweet cool water&#8221;), much of the vocabulary is general and repetitive (e.g., &#8220;let me tell you&#8221;; &#8220;Now ill tell you&#8221;).

The response shows an awareness of a conversational style that attempts to engage the reader, in this case with rhetorical questions (&#8220;You ask how…?&#8221; and &#8220;So what do you think…?&#8221;).

This response focuses on the relationship between animals and how they deal with temperature extremes (&#8220;in harsh and difficult areas&#8221;), and that controlling idea is sustained throughout.

Most transitions (&#8220;Let me tell you about…&#8221;; &#8220;But…&#8221;; &#8220;How you ask?&#8221;) adequately connect ideas.

The introduction and conclusion are apparent and do function to introduce and conclude the information: the use of commentary (&#8220;peie of cake&#8221;; &#8220;well in my apinion its pretty cool&#8221;) would be considered ineffective at a higher level but are 4th grade-appropriate.

The progression of ideas is generally clear (hot desert climate followed by cold ocean climate). The sentence &#8220;Now Ill tell you about the ocean…&#8221; is somewhat confusing because the subject of the ocean has already been introduced; this minor lapse, however, does not interfere enough to lower the overall score.

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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: 3974

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