Grade 6

Argumentative

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Clean Communities

Conventions

Evidence/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

There are no errors with sentence structure.

There are comma errors with lists (“It can lead to animals dying, an overdose of trash in the beach and lakes and the poisoning of the earth” and “the lack of friuts, veggies, meat and dairy”), and a comma missing to separate independent compound clauses (e.g., “There is an imbalance of glass being recycled and disposed of and that is causing a lot of companies to shut down”). There is an unnecessary apostrophe (“CRT’s”)

There are no errors with capital letters.

There are no grammar usage errors.

There are some errors with spelling of grade-appropriate words (“beleive”; “shoud”; “biult&#8221;; “friuts”).
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Some specific information is used from a single source.

General information is attributed to one source, Source #3.

The response is mostly a summary of information from Source #3. Paragraph two needs more elaboration to explain the relevance of the information presented (explanation of how this information supports the claim – as it is, it only explains the problem). Other elaboration via inference is logical if possibly overstated (“plants can die, leading to the hunger of herbivores on a farm”). Overall, the response is too brief to be developed enough for a higher score.

The occasional awkward phrasing (“biult by the day”) is compensated for by some effective phrasing (“chain reaction of karma or bad luck”; “huger of herbivores on a farm”).

The style is adequate. The introduction nicely begins by pairing a short sentence to engage the reader, followed by explanations that lead to the claim. Paragraphs two and three are appropriate for an argument.

The somewhat narrow focus establishes the problems with tech-trash, but there is little information about promoting solutions. Therefore, the essay is more informational than argumentative.

Transitions are uneven: there are some internal transitions (“Now”; “When…”; “If…”; “This means…”) although connections between paragraphs are lacking.

The introduction nicely sets up the larger problem with litter, and then narrows the issue down to the ultimate claim (“our school shoud do the technology recycling day”). The final sentence—the conclusion—on the other hand, is cursory yet repetitive.

Paragraph two explains the problem (the problem with discarding e-trash); paragraph three explains the results of the problem (ultimate damage caused by e-trash); information about an actual e-trash recycling day, however, is too minimal 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: 5208

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