<ul>
<li>All released anchors come from the pilot test, which did not specifically ask students to cite sources or to use multiple sources. Current Performance Tasks specifically tell students to use multiple sources and to attribute information to reference materials.</li>
<li>The sources on the pilot test differed from those on the practice test. The pilot test included a video. Information from the video was the basis for Source #1 on the practice test.</li>
</ul>

Grade 5

Opinion

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Service Animals

Conventions

Evidence/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

The response consists of three sentences with the second being a long run-on sentence.

There is an unnecessary comma before &#8220;because&#8221; and a missing comma separating independent clauses (&#8220;other animals aren’t taimmed&#8230;&#8221; and &#8220;you really don’t want…&#8221;). Given that the second sentence is a run-on sentence, there is very little accurate use of punctuation other than the end punctuation for each of the three sentences.

There are no capitalization errors.

There are a few grammar usage errors. &#8220;Tipe&#8221; (in the phrase &#8220;…those tipe of places&#8221;) should be a plural. And there are errors forming participles: &#8220;tammed&#8221; and &#8220;taimmed&#8221; should be “tame” (&#8220;tame animals&#8221; and &#8220;animals aren’t tame&#8221;).

There are many spelling errors throughout the response (e.g., “oppinion,” “tammed,” “aproputly,” “taimmed,” and “tipe”). Note: &#8220;aproputly&#8221; is not a grade 5 word.

Evidence from source materials is minimal and too vague to support the opinion. Some ideas (e.g., unsupervised animals) are irrelevant.

There is no attribution of source materials, and the ideas are too general to associate with resources.

The minimal elaboration (via attempted explanation) is vague, repetitive, and inadequate for the audience and purpose (&#8220;…you really don’t want to take a cat out or other animals, because they are not animals who belong in those tipe of places&#8221;).

The vocabulary is weak and general (&#8220;is ok&#8221;) and/or repetitive (appropriate, behaved).

The response shows little evidence of any style appropriate for the audience of an opinion article.

The response is too brief and vague, offering weak support for the general opinion.

There are no evident transitions to connect the seemingly random ideas.

There is an introduction that states a weak opinion (&#8220;this [new law] is ok&#8221;) and a conclusion (&#8220;…the new law is appropriate for this tipe of situation&#8221;).

This brief response has an unclear progression, and the few general and repetitive details used (&#8220;tame&#8221;/&#8221;untamed&#8221;) are listed in a single rambling sentence and are not always relevant as presented (unsupervised animals).

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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 5: Opinion – Service Animals - ID: 4059

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