Grade 3

Opinion

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Islands

Conventions

Evidence/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

There are no sentence structure errors in this response.

There appears to be some struggle with compound words, evident by multiple word choice errors. For example, when the student uses “a” instead of “an” before the word&#8221; assortment.&#8221; Additionally, in the same paragraph, paragraph 3, “any where” is used instead of “anywhere.&#8221; The same error is later made with the word “water falls.&#8221;

There is a capitalization error in the fourth paragraph. The word “The” is capitalized in the second line when it does not need to be.

There are no spelling errors in this response.

There are a couple of places where the student missed and apostrophe (e.g., “cant” and “its”). Additionally, a period is used as an end mark to a question instead of a question mark in paragraph five.

This response contains convincing details that are attributed to source #2.

Overall, the response demonstrates a variety of elaboration strategies. For example, there is elaboration via commentary (“You cant do that anywhere else” “What an experience that would be”).  Much of the development comes through inferences. For example, there are some mature inferences (e.g., “You will be so occupied there will be no time to be bored”) along with a few somewhat obvious inferences (e.g., “it [source 2] says tropical islands are near the equator which means the ocean water is warm”), and some inferences that aren’t necessarily text-supported (e.g., “palm trees that you can’t find any where else!”).

However, some text details are directly copied (but not quoted) along with an additional brief comment (e.g., “Did you know that [copied detail about lagoons]?” “[copied detail about sea creatures] just to name a few”).

Despite some general language (especially transitions), there are many effective words (e.g., “escape,” “occupied,” and “terrifyingly”) along with phrases (e.g.,  “Interestingly enough” and “entertaining place”) that successfully engage the reader.

These same phrases, along with some well-chosen (if not well-punctuated) comments and question/answers (“You can’t do that….can you!”) establish a conversational style that is effective for the audience.

The introduction to this response begins by providing a context via a rhetorical question, along with a clear opinion about a comparison between tropical and cold islands. This is followed by a list of the support to be used. The conclusion basically repeats this list of topics and is not effective.

The introduction to this response begins by providing a context via a rhetorical question, along with a clear opinion about a comparison between tropical and cold islands.

The obvious progression of ideas is sustained, along with predictable transitions between paragraphs (“To begin with,” “Second,” “Third,” “Lastly,” “That is why I…”). Within paragraphs, there are some subtle transitions (“Amazingly enough,” “Interestingly enough”) as well as more typical connectors such as “also.”

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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: 444

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