Grade 8

Argumentative

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Penny

Conventions

Evidence/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

The sentence formation errors include a comma splice (&#8220;Now compare that to someone who is preserving the penny, at an average wage, the person…&#8221;) and a sentence fragment (&#8220;Not even including what the Treasury looses every year just to make the penny, which is $100 million&#8221;).

The end punctuation on the first sentence of the last paragraph should be a question mark. There is a missing comma after an introductory element (&#8220;Because of this the Treasury…&#8221;).

There is one capitalization error.

There are multiple places throughout the response where the student has incorrectly used a frequently confused word, which also contributes to the multiple spelling errors in the response (e.g., “effect” should be “affect” and “loose” should be “lose”). Additionally, there is a missing article (“Even if buisness owners rounded their cents against the customer, customer would…”) that could be an agreement error depending on the student’s intended meaning. There is also an agreement error (&#8220;…how much it cost to make it&#8221;).

There are many spelling errors throughout the response (e.g., “buisness,” “tansaction,” “evern,” “answer,” “putiing”). Several forms of the word &#8220;lose&#8221; are misspelled more than once (e.g., &#8220;loose,&#8221; &#8220;looses,&#8221; &#8220;loosing&#8221;).

There are some specific details pulled from the available source materials, although many are copied.

Although there are no attributions of sources, the response pulls information from more than one source.

Elaboration techniques attempted are limited. The response develops ideas by personal appeal (e.g., &#8220;let me inform you of some things you should know&#8221;) and by posing and answering questions (e.g., &#8220;…is the penny a great waste of time[?] The answer is yes…&#8221;). Given that so much material is copied, these few attempts to develop ideas are overall weak.

Original language and vocabulary is somewhat general and repetitive (e.g., &#8220;waste of time,&#8221; &#8220;tell you&#8221;/&#8221;told you&#8221;).

The personal appeal and use of rhetorical question (and answer) contribute to a sense of style that is appropriate for the argumentative purpose.

The response has a clear claim (&#8220;abolishing the penny&#8221;) and that focus is adequately maintained throughout.

The transitions between supporting ideas are general and formulaic (&#8220;First off,&#8221; &#8220;Next,&#8221; &#8220;Finally&#8221;). The internal transitions are mostly copied from the original sources (&#8220;Just this year&#8221;; &#8220;Even if&#8221;); while these effectively connect the ideas, they are not original to the student writing.

The introduction has an effective hook and a clear claim that is couched as an effective call to action (&#8220;join me in abolishing the penny&#8221;). This is followed, however, by a less effective mechanical announcement of supports. The conclusion has a weak beginning (&#8220;Now that I’ve told you…&#8221;), and although it ends with a generalization, that generalization is merely a repetition of a conclusion presented at the end of paragraph 6 (&#8220;not worth the effort&#8221;).

While the organization of the ideas is logical, large chunks of the supporting information is copied verbatim (and sometimes inaccurately) and presented in the order of the source materials.

There is no acknowledgment or address of the opposing point of view.

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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 8: Argumentative – Penny - ID: 4208

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