Grade 6

Argumentative

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Clean Communities

Conventions

Evidence/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

There is a single sentence formation error, a run-on sentence (“So then he was able to get a company to give him his first small grant then he started working with people”).

There are many errors with punctuation. There are unnecessary commas (“First reason, why I would pick…would be…”). There are many missing commas after introductory elements and many missing commas to separate compound independent clauses (one example showing both types: “When he grew up he started to clean the riverbanks around his hometown but as he did this he&#8217;s money was going low”). Although these comma errors are frequent and severe for the grade level, they represent just one punctuation convention.

There are no errors with capital letters.

There is an error with a possessive pronoun (“he’s” instead of “his”).

The word “every” is misspelled as “ever.”

The evidence used is either general (“finally he was able to clean the rivers”) or, as presented, somewhat irrelevant (e.g., a summary of background information such as “The person that experienced that was a man named Chad….So then he was able to get a company to give him his first small&#8230;”).

There is one reference attributed to Source #1 and one to Source #2.

There is little development of details. Instead, the response relies on a general summary, with little original development or extension. One exception would be the final line of paragraph 2, which provides an inference: “So if we adopt a highway then we will be able to encourage people to also adopt one.”

The vocabulary used is general, providing a broad summary of the information in the source materials.

The style is not inappropriate, but the summary approach is too general to develop a persuasive argument.

The claim is clear (“I would pick to adopt a highway”), but the focus is insufficiently sustained by relevant details that would explain keeping the environment “clean and healthier.”

The formulaic words “First,” “Second,” and “In conclusion” separate the body paragraphs. The word “so” is also used to minimally connect ideas. Overall, these connections are limited.

The first sentence provides a clear claim, and the second sentence presents vague supporting details (keep environment “clean and healthier”). The conclusion restates the claim and mentions the vague “because of the reasons I gave” before tacking on a seemingly new reason “help…the environment,” which is really a repeat of the information in the introduction.

Although there are no extraneous details presented, the ideas are weakly connected to the claim.

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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 6: Argumentative – Clean Communities - ID: 5098

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