Grade 8

Narrative

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Geocaching

Conventions

Development/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

There are several run-on sentences (e.g., “We arrived at are destination after a short train ride it was a park surrounded by trees with a small pond in the corner”) and a sentence fragment (“Scanning the area for statues or memorial benches”).

There are errors with a variety of punctuation conventions: a missing colon before a list (“I checked again to make sure we had everything GPS, check, map, check, water bottles,…”), lack of punctuation at the end of sentences in dialogue (e.g., “&#8217;Okay we gotta go towards the pond'&#8221;) and within dialogue (e.g., “’Yeah it&#8217;ll be fun’ they smiled”), and missing commas after introductory elements (e.g., “Finding none I hand the GPS to them”).

The word “yep” should be capitalized, as should the personal pronoun &#8220;I,&#8221; “Awesome” should not.

There are errors with the frequently confused words &#8220;are/our&#8221; and an error with pronoun case (“me and Ash go geocaching”). There is also an unclear pronoun reference (“I&#8217;ll never forget how that increased my passion for geocaching”). Note that the writer consistently (and therefore correctly) uses the pronoun “they” to refer to the friend, expressing a gender-reference preference.

There are no errors with spelling.

Some events are confusing because they lack explanation. For example, there are no references to actual clues for locating a cache. And it’s never clear where the cache is: In the pond? The story only references the GPS as a guide to locating the treasure, so references to “statues or memorial benches” are confusing. In addition, some details (e.g., information about the metro cards and the Metro Station) are not relevant to the plot.

There are general references to the use of GPS, and there is an implied treasure of sorts (“the amber glow”).

Narrative techniques are limited. There is dialogue that is effective in providing a personality for the characters. But the setting (&#8220;a small pond&#8221;) is too general to enhance the narrative, and there is little use of figurative/sensory language.

Overall, the language used to tell this brief story is adequate. There is some variety used to describe the same feeling or event (e.g., “&#8217;excited,&#8217;” “nervously,” and “anxious”) and some sensory language (“The sun was setting just enough to hit the pond and reflect the amber glow”).

Some dialogue (&#8220;&#8216;yep&#8217; replying with an equally loud voice&#8221; and &#8220;&#8216;Woahh&#8217; gasped Ash&#8221;) shows an awareness of the need to “show” (rather than “tell about”) characters and actions, but overall, the response is too brief to show more than basic elements of style.

The plot is not adequately developed for the assigned writing task. The major conflict (searching for a treasure cache) is not clarified until midway through the response; in fact, for the first half of the story, it would seem the metro train ride is the focus. Furthermore, at the end of the narrative, it isn’t clear what the “cache” is.

Dialogue is used between characters, and the point of view is consistently first person. Descriptive details of the events and the setting are limited; the response includes some irrelevant details and only vague relevant details, ultimately providing a limited response to the writing task itself.

There are some subtle transitions to advance the brief story (the checklist launches the events; the “Scanning the area” and “Finding none,” “hand[ing] the GPS to them&#8221;, heading “towards the pond,” and finally “Reaching the edge”). The details that are included are well-connected, but more details would contribute to a more unified story.

The narrative begins with a verbal list (“GPS, check, map, check, water bottles, check and lastly our metro-cards”) in response to the question “&#8217;Do we have everything?&#8217;” which helps launch the events. From there, the journey to the train station and then to the park is chronological if only sketchily presented.

The narrative opens as the characters are about to embark on an adventure, effectively engaging the audience with dialogue. However, the beginning doesn’t make it clear that this is a geocaching adventure. The narrative closes somewhat abruptly (“‘That’s Awesome&#8230;.’ Now me and Ash go geocaching about three-four times a month”) and ends with the somewhat bland “I’ll never forget how that increased my passion…”. Overall, however, the opening and closing are adequate.

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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: 5285

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