Grade 3

Opinion

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Islands

Conventions

Evidence/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

There are no grade 3-specific errors with sentences.

There are no errors with grammar usage. Note that frequently confused words (e.g., “Their” for &#8220;There&#8221;) do not reflect grade 3 expectations.

The errors in punctuation are not relevant for grade 3.

There is an unnecessary capital letter for “More.”

This response does integrate (and in a simplistic way, synthesize) details from both sources (e.g., “you won’t have much of a food choice but you won’t have to have many hurricanes”). There is also some copying (“live in brightly colored houses that dot the hill side”) and close paraphrasing (“rocky…covered in ice, but they are very pretty” versus “rocky and are covered in ice but are very beutiful”).

Elaboration is limited to a few hypothetical connections (“You might be able to skate on the ice,” “you will be able to stay inside a house and it won’t get hot,” “you can bring coats,” and the somewhat specious connection: “if you run out of water…”).

Overall, the language use is general.

There is no separate introduction in this response, and the conclusion is missing entirely.

There is a clear statement of opinion (“you should visit the cold islands”).

There are few transitions other than “Also.”

The paragraphing is arbitrary, with the progression of ideas being mostly a list-like presentation of reasons to compare the cold and hot islands and support the position favoring “cold.”

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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 3: Opinion – Islands - ID: 425

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