Grade 8

Narrative

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Geocaching

Conventions

Development/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

There are run-on sentences (e.g., “She gave you a shiney sitcker that read &#8216;geocacher&#8217; about 3 and 1/2 hours later you still…” and “The park is so green and so beautiful, you can see the clouds starting to roll in so you tell you&#8217;re friends that we have to hurry”).

There are a variety of comma errors, including commas missing after introductory elements and to separate compound independent clauses (e.g., “In Catalina once you get to you’re hotel and put your things away you start out on …”), the incorrect use of commas for lists (“Inside was a record from the sixties, coins from other counties, a land-yard and, a book” and “going back to your hotel room packed up and caught the next boat to london”), a misplaced comma with quotation marks (“…book that was titled ‘The Giver’”), a missing comma within the only piece of dialogue in the response (“’…you have to wear a sitcker that says youre geocaching’ Cat said”), and a missing comma for a nonrestrictive element (an element that is also missing a verb: “The next cache was leading you to a grape vinery called &#8216;Cat&#8217;s Grape Vinery&#8217; which qutie a werid place to hide something”). Although other punctuation skills are used correctly, the frequency and variety of errors with commas indicate minimal control of punctuation.

There is a capital missing for the city London and a missing capital for “cat,” the winery owner.

There are frequent and varied errors with grammar usage, including frequently confused words (repeated incorrect use of &#8220;your/you’re&#8221; and confusion over &#8220;counties/countries&#8221;). There are also problems with pronouns, including the consistent use of pronouns (e.g., “you tell you&#8217;re friends that we have to hurry”) and pronoun agreement (e.g., “other one” should be “another one” or “other ones”). Other errors with word use cause confusion (e.g., “On” instead of “Once”). Overall, given the brevity of the response, these varied and repeated errors demonstrate minimal control of conventions.

There are misspelled words, including “land-yard&#8221; (lanyard), “shiney,” “sitcker,” “werid,” and “qutie.”

Too many important details are undeveloped (e.g., “After 30 minutes of looking for the cache one of you&#8217;re friends finally found it”). Specific descriptions of the park and the winery would help illustrate the scene.

The reference to the contents of the first cache is the only reference to the source materials.

The story narrates the limited events with uneven description quality (e.g., “you can see the clouds starting to roll in” versus “After 30 minutes of looking…”). There is an early attempt to include dialogue that is not correctly presented (“you tell you&#8217;re friends that we have to hurry”). The only other dialogue is a directive from “cat,” the owner of the winery.

There are limited attempts at integrating sensory/figurative language (“clouds starting to roll in” and “shiney sitcker”), but most vocabulary is more general than precise or vivid.

The most successful technique for creating an engaging narrative style is the use of second-person point of view. Other attempts at creating a strong style are of limited success (e.g., the humor attempted with “&#8217;Cat’s Grape Vinery&#8217;”), and the pace set for the story&#8217;s action is too rapid to engage the reader for long.

The story includes two geocache searches, both set on Catalina Island. However, both quests (one successful and one unsuccessful) provide only vague references to interesting difficulties locating the caches (the essential conflicts).

The story puts the reader in the role of the main character (“you…”), with only vague references to other characters (“closest friends”) except for “cat.” The second-person point of view is sustained. There is minimal dialogue and description used.

Although the story is brief, transitions are effective in establishing connections (e.g., “The first cache”; “After 30 minutes&#8230;&#8221;; &#8220;finally”; ”The next cache”; and “Once you got”).

The sequence is chronological, although the story progresses quickly, moving through two quests in eleven sentences, that the chain of events is simplistic.

The story begins effectively with a hypothetical situation (“Can you imagine this? Your on a boat…”). However, the beginning fails to explain the concept of geocaching, leaving the reader confused. The ending is abrupt and provides minimal closure (“&#8230;going back to your hotel room packed up and caught the next boat to london”).

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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: 5315

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