Grade 6

Narrative

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Robots

Conventions

Development/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

Three sentences of the six-sentence response are run-on sentences.

There are missing commas, including missing commas in compound sentences (e.g., &#8220;he…shot it with a ray gun but it had no effect so he went…&#8221;). Arguably, the fourth sentence is a question and should end with a question mark.

With the exception of “THE END,” no capital letters are used in the response.

The responses is too brief to assess grammar usage, but other than reversing the traditional word order with the phrase &#8220;March 13th on Friday,&#8221; there are no errors in this category.

There are no grade-level spelling errors (e.g., “scientes,” “phinoex,” and “smitherines” are all above grade 6).

Although the events are clear, the experience lacks details and the narrator/characters are undeveloped (Who is the mad scientist? What did the robot look like?).

References to the robot talking, playing, running, and cooking vaguely connect to the source materials.

Narrative techniques such as dialogue and/or description are minimal or absent and do not illustrate or advance the narrative (mad scientist; &#8220;[the robot] could jump, talk, ply, run, and even cook&#8221;).

A few examples of figurative language (&#8220;bonkers,&#8221; &#8220;in the blink if an eye,&#8221; &#8220;blew the x-bot6969 to smitherines&#8221;) are effective, but in other places the language is too general to illustrate the experience (&#8220;so amazing,&#8221; &#8220;huge ball of fire&#8221;).

The response is too brief for any discernable or consistent style. Phrases such as &#8220;dark and stormy&#8221; night can’t compensate for a scarcity of details.

The brief, basic plot is little more than a series of events. Although the events are related, the response is more of a series of events than a story: an amazing robot [inexplicably] turns destructive on Friday the 13th, and the mad scientist finally succeeds in destroying him.

The response is too brief for any meaningful establishment of characters or setting.

The response demonstrates some emergent understanding of event sequence; however, major gaps in the storyline exist. There is the “before,” when the most amazing robot ever is created; the turning point (&#8220;it all went wrong on march 13th&#8230;&#8221;); and the “after,” when the robot becomes destructive and the scientist focuses on destroying the robot (&#8220;&#8230;have to destroy the best creation ever.&#8221;).

There are some appropriate transitions (&#8220;it all went wrong on&#8230;&#8221;; &#8220;so what else could the scientes do but&#8230;&#8221;; &#8220;in the blink of an eye&#8230;&#8221;), but they fail to advance the plot meaningfully because there are too few details. In addition, some transitions are repetitive (&#8220;so,&#8221; &#8220;and,&#8221; &#8220;but&#8221;) and contribute to the sense of the response being a list rather than a narrative.

Although there is a story beginning (&#8220;dark and stormy night&#8221;), there is no context for the presence of “the mad scientist” or his invention. The ending is abrupt and unsatisfying (&#8220;THE END&#8221; does not constitute an ending).

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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.

Evidence/Elaboration

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 6: Narrative – Robots - ID: 4115

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