Grade 5

Narrative

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Whales

Conventions

Development/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

There are no errors with sentence formation.

There are many errors with punctuation. For example, there are errors with misplaced punctuation with dialogue (“’The snacks in Olivers stroller’, he said”), and there are some commas missing preceding dialogue (“He said ‘Shark! Shark!’”). Commas are also missing to separate compound independent clauses (&#8220;My mom was trying to calm him but he just wouldn’t settle down”). In addition, there are missing apostrophes in contractions (e.g., “wouldnt”; “Im”) and to show possession (“Olivers stroller”). Note that the overused exclamation marks are distracting but not errors.

There are no errors with capital letters.

Some incorrectly used words cause mild confusion (“game” should be “came”). Inconsistent verb tenses cause occasional mild confusion (“The whale was&#8230;&#8221;; &#8220;This has been the first time&#8230;”).

There are relatively few spelling errors (“excalimed&#8221;; “peice”; “snorkling”; &#8220;balogna&#8221;).

Overall, the experience is adequately developed although some minimally explained details cause occasional confusion (e.g., why did the tour guide have “millions” of extra cameras? And what attracted the whale to the boat? Was it Oliver’s screaming? And it’s not particularly logical that corn puffs, pizza, and a balogna sandwich would satisfy a whale).

Few specific details from the source materials are used, but these vague references to whales do not detract from the story.

Some dialogue is used, and specific details about food also help to develop the story.

There is some mixed language use, with precise/vivid language (e.g., “sunburnt as a red tomato” and “distraught”) compensating for more general or imprecise or repeated words/phrases (e.g., “This is crazy!”; “whale swarming around us”; “The whale ran after them!”).

The style is not distinctive, but there are clear attempts to engage the audience with details about the characters (especially Oliver).

The story demonstrates adequate plot structure, with a normal boat tour turning into an adventure with a stalking whale.

The characters are adequately established, especially the character of the frightened baby brother, Oliver, but the description of the setting is limited.

Traditional transitions, mostly temporal (“When”; “Then”; “So”), adequately move readers through the narrative.

The pacing is uneven with some attempts to slow the narrative down to show the situation (e.g., “We had to wait. That whale just wouldnt leave us alone. So we waited for hours and hours”), but then in other places, the narrative seems rather rushed (e.g. feeding the whale).

The opening begins with an attempted attention-getter (“The whale was so big!”) followed by a factual identification of the whale, pulling the reader into the situation. The ending attempts humor.

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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 5: Narrative – Whales - ID: 5487

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