Grade 8

Narrative

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Geocaching

Conventions

Development/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

There are more run-ons than correct sentences (e.g., “I walked behind it and fond a defenate enterance to the hut the inside was amazing!”).

There are many errors with commas: missing commas in a list (“there was a bench a fireplace and just open space”), missing commas after introductory clauses (e.g., “When I first started I had to get a GPS app…”), and missing commas to separate compound independent clauses (e.g., “…I had to get a GPS app on my phone and all I now needed was the coordinates&#8230;”). There are missing apostrophes for contractions (“couldnt”). Relative to the brevity of the response, these errors demonstrate inconsistent control of punctuation.

There are missing capital letters for the state of California, GPS, the personal pronoun I, and at the beginning of some sentences. There is an unnecessary capital for the common noun cache.

There are errors with frequently confused words (e.g., &#8220;it’s/its&#8221;).

There are too many misspelled words to list.

The development is mixed. The actual hut is adequately described, but more consistent information about the clue that sent the narrator to the bench in the beach hut and more information about the actual treasure would have justified a higher score.

There are some vague references to information from the sources, such as the “GPS app,” the online source for finding a cache, and a treasure at the end of the search.

The experience is more “told” than “shown,” with no dialogue, no evidence of pacing, and little effort to establish mood other than the brief and vague comment “was amazing.”

There is some repetition (e.g., “Geocaching is a modern day way to go outside and do a treasure hunt with your whole family just outside!”), and most of the vocabulary is general (“amazing”), with no sensory or figurative language to illustrate the experience.

The hurried listing of events (“i rode….I walked….I saw….I walked….I walked….i dug&#8230;&#8221;) does little to engage readers in the experience.

The limited plot is straightforward and cursory, with no intriguing complications to engage the reader (even the GPS showed a “straight line”).

The narrator is the only character in the story who uses the first-person point of view to tell about a past event. The setting is somewhat established.

There are few transitions, with the events more listed than connected.

The story tells about a previous event (the narrator discovering their first cache), but the chronological events are strung together (“i rode….I walked….I saw….I walked….I walked….i dug&#8230;&#8221;), and although there are no irrelevant events, the story is only weakly unified.

The beginning and the end are adequate. The beginning defines geocaching and provides sufficient background information. The ending is somewhat brief but provides closure, with a brief reflection on the accomplishment and a relevant call for others to try geocaching.

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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.

Evidence/Elaboration

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 8: Narrative – Geocaching - ID: 5272

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