Grade 6

Argumentative

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Clean Communities

Conventions

Evidence/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

There are many sentence errors, including run-ons (e.g., “also its a good dead to do that also its not that bad to clean up after your self”).

There are missing commas after introductory elements and to separate compound independent clauses (as an example of both: “…if we cleand up after are selfs ther whould be no reson to have junkyards and the roads will be nice and there would be less ncidents”). There are also missing apostrophes (“wont”; “Theres”). Overall, given the high density of comma errors, the response fails to demonstrate control of punctuation.

The personal pronoun &#8220;I&#8221; is not capitalized, and there are missing capitals at the beginning of many sentences.

There are many errors with frequently confused words (its/it’s; dead/deed; too/to; right/write; our/are; tern/turn).

There are too many misspelled words to list.

Most details are vague references to Sources #1 and #2 (e.g., “roads will be nice” and “trash will go evrey where and if i got in to the water it could pulut the the water and the fish”). The information from paragraph 3 is weakly integrated and repetitive.

References from sources are insufficient: there is a single vague and inaccurate attempt to attribute one source (“i have thes from sorce 1 if we cleand up…”), although there are unacknowledged references to Source #2 as well.

There is some evident attempt to develop ideas with connections to prior knowledge (“six pack caryers” choking birds) and some not illogical but extreme inferences (e.g., “one by on the humans will start dying…[and] then the world dies”). However, these attempted elaborations are too uneven (or too loosely tied to text details) to justify a higher score.

Overall, the vocabulary is general, weak, and/or confusing despite occasional precise language use (“incidents”; “infected”).

There is no evidence of an awareness of appropriate style; in fact, the dire end-of-the-world warnings are arguably counterproductive.

The response does not respond to the task of choosing a project (technology recycling or adopting a highway). Therefore, although the response does maintain a focus on picking up trash (the off-task claim), and the response does respond to the argumentative purpose and is therefore scoreable, the response fails to respond to the prompt.

There are transitions used but the details are too loosely connected to the task to be adequate (“Theres more”; “And”; “also”; “so”; “and that is whey…”).

The first sentence puts forth an off-task claim (“pick up the trash”), and the conclusion repeats a weak claim (“you should clean up”) followed by a repeat of the apocalyptic warning (“world whould end”).

The ideas are mostly listed and random (“ther whould be no reson to have junkyards and the roads will be nice and there would be less ncidents”). Paragraph 3 presents a worst-case scenario (if we don’t/if we do) that is more extraneous than appropriate for this argumentative task.

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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: 5165

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