Grade 8

Narrative

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Geocaching

Conventions

Development/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

Fragments such as “Go on a hike?&#8221; and &#8220;Go shopping for a new bikini?” are purposeful. Other incomplete structures (e.g., “As they went on the trail discussed what they wanted for lunch after”) are likely caused by missing words but are errors nonetheless.

There are several errors with punctuation, including misplaced punctuation with quoted material (“anyone can hide their ‘treasure’,”), unnecessary commas (e.g., “So the girls got all their things, and had Emma&#8217;s mom drive them…”), and commas missing to separate compound independent clauses (e.g., “They looked at the website and it said…”).

There are some errors with capital letters. A word at the beginning of a sentence is not capitalized (&#8220;they were about to give up&#8230;&#8221;). There is one instance of  &#8220;disneyland&#8221; that isn&#8217;t capitalized, one instance of &#8220;sign&#8221; after &#8220;Hollywood&#8221; that isn&#8217;t capitalized, and &#8220;In-n-out&#8221; should be &#8220;In-N-Out.&#8221;

There is an error with the frequently confused words &#8220;quit/quite&#8221; and imprecise verb tense shifts (e.g., “Geocaching is a modern day treasure hunt, where anyone can hide their &#8216;treasure,&#8217; and then others can find it. On the website or app, you will enter in a zip code or address, and then it will give you clues and directions to geocaches near you”).

There are a few spelling errors (e.g., “intriuged,&#8221; “veiw,” “definetly,” and “recomend”).

The development of details is uneven. For example, more details are needed to illustrate some events (e.g., “The girls took turns shoveling and soon found the geocache!”) and/or to describe key items (e.g., the geocache box itself). There are some details about the setting (Los Angeles), but they are not necessarily relevant, as presented, to the search itself.

There are references to the source materials, but they reflect minor misunderstandings. For example, according to sources, the clues are puzzles and not “directions” per se. In addition, geocache treasures are not normally valuable.

The events are primarily narrated or described rather than shown. There is no dialogue among the characters, although the beginning of the response does have some inner dialogue to describe the narrator’s state of mind. Overall, the use of narrative techniques is adequate.

The language use is somewhat uneven. There is some adequate wording (“how to welcome summer in” and “The possibilities are endless!”), but overall, there is more imprecise wording. Occasional missing words, or repeated words, cause mild confusion (“As they went on the trail discussed what they wanted for lunch after” and “first go to the big palm tree west of the the parking lot”). There are few concrete, figurative, or sensory details about the setting or the characters.

There is some evident sense of narrative style, especially at the beginning of the story (the narrator’s short, rhetorical questions, for example). Techniques such as the purposeful misspelling of “alllll” attempt to create a feeling of excitement. Fragments such as “Go on a hike? Go shopping for a new bikini?” help establish the narrative pace.

The conflict (locating the cache) is adequately introduced, as are the characters. The conflict includes some moderately interesting complications (the shovel).

In addition to the narrator, there are general references to characters, along with a general setting and a consistent point of view. The story includes some inner dialogue to establish the plot (“Should they go to the community pool? Go on a hike?”).

Transitions are adequate (e.g., “But,” “So,” “As they went,” and “As soon as”) if occasionally repetitive (“When…”).

The events are presented in chronological order. Some information, for example, the discussion about where to go to lunch, initially seems extraneous; however, the relevance comes to light at the end when the girls decide to lunch instead at Disneyland.

The beginning effectively sets up the narrator, showing the narrator’s mood, and includes sufficient information about geocaching to set up the narrative. The closing is appropriate if somewhat sophomoric (“When they got back to school in August, they told alllll their friends about geocaching, and soon their whole school was going on geocache adventures together. Geocaching is so much fun and they would recomend it to anyone they meet!!!”).

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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: 5312

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