Grade 6

Argumentative

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Clean Communities

Conventions

Evidence/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

The response has some fragments (e.g., “Not just the air but the water we drink and the water for the underwater life”).

There are a variety of punctuation errors, including a missing apostrophe for the possessive noun “schools,” unnecessary commas (“This I know, because…”), missing commas to separate independent compound clauses (e.g., “Most people think its okay to throw away technology but we aren&#8217;t those people”), commas missing after introductory elements (e.g., “Like the schools in New Mexico we can collect…”), and a missing period to end the last sentence in paragraph two. There is also a punctuation error after quoted material: the reference to the speaker should be followed by a comma and not a period (“’…reused or recycled.’ Mark Dabek said in source four”).

There is random and unnecessary capitalization of the adjective (“Hazardous”).

There are relatively frequent errors of a variety of types. There are errors with frequently confused words (e.b., &#8220;are/our&#8221; and &#8216;its/it’s&#8221;), several errors with subject/verb agreement (e.g., “Within the CRTs in computers contains,” “the companies that refurbished,” and “company…take/make”), and an error with superlative adjective form (“more fresh”).

There are some errors with spelling: “Technologhy,&#8221; “ “that” is misspelled as “the,” “to” is misspelled as “ta,” “three” is misspelled as “tree,” “they” is misspelled as “the,” and “both” is misspelled as “bot.” While some of these misspellings are likely typos, they are errors nevertheless.

The response includes a variety of text details, although they are not well-integrated and/or are too general. Details are frequently repetitive (e.g., “We need to stop throwing away the technology we do not need. By doing this we can stop the Earth from getting poisoned. The Earth and water will be more fresh than it has been for a long time”). A few details are used imprecisely (e.g., the source states that “raw materials can be reused to make everything from appliances to office buildings,” but the response incorrectly states that “circuit boards…can be made into appliances to office buildings”).

Direct quotes from Sources #3 and #4 are cited; other additional, more general details are unattributed.

Most supporting evidence is comprised of adequate summary. Other elaboration is sometimes ineffective (e.g., “There sure are a quite a few more facts I have found”) or too general (“The Earth and water will be more fresh than it has been for a long time”), and some inferences are not text-supported (“Most people think its okay to throw away technology…”).

Weak word choices (&#8220;bad&#8221;) and some awkward phrasing (e.g., “We need to stop from overfilling landfills” and “There sure are a quite a few”) keep this response from a higher score. Sentences and phrases such as “I will prove to you why we should do this” and “This I know, because” are self-evident and are more distracting than useful in crafting an argument.

“My name is William and I want to tell you,&#8221; &#8220;I will prove to you,&#8221; and &#8220;Now you will learn more about…” seem stilted and artificial, resulting in a style that is not compelling. The single instance of effective style (“But the question is: Where will the tech go?”) is insufficient to overcome the weaknesses.

The response consistently supports the claim, but the structure is inconsistent. Specifically, paragraph two is not substantively different from paragraph four: “We need to recycle the technology we don&#8217;t need anymore” versus “We need to stop throwing away the technology we do not need.” One possible explanation is that paragraph two loosely summarizes the information in Source #3 while paragraph four partially summarizes the information in Source #4, but as used here, they seem more repetitive than argument-building.

The response is somewhat choppy, with no transitions between paragraphs and mostly ineffective and/or formulaic internal transitions.

The introduction provides a clear claim but is distractingly formulaic. The conclusion is rambling and repetitive (e.g., “These tree reasons show,&#8221; &#8220;These three reasons were,&#8221; &#8220;The next one is,&#8221; &#8220;The last one is,&#8221; &#8220;I mostly think the main reason,&#8221; and &#8220;The other reason”).

While there is no extraneous information, the progression of ideas is somewhat rambling. The third reason (&#8220;we need to stop throwing away tech around the school and community&#8221;) is intrinsically part of reasons 1 and 2 (“for the health of our community” and “to stop overfilling our landfill”). Paragraph four repeats ideas and then explains the proposed solution, which describes collecting “bags of old cell phones” The conclusion then lists three slightly different reasons (“we need to recycle technology,&#8221; &#8220;we need to stop overfilling the landfills,&#8221; and &#8220;We need to not throw away technology trash”). Again, these three reasons are repetitive, yet at the same time, they do not accurately mirror the three reasons given in the introduction, nor do they mirror the content in the three body paragraphs. Overall, the progression of ideas is too weak for a higher score.

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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: 5197

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