Grade 5

Narrative

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Whales

Conventions

Development/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

There is a run-on sentence (“The whale had blasted out of the ocean to get a fresh gulp of air, it was fantastic!”), but otherwise, the sentences are correct.

There are no errors with capital letters.

There are no grade-appropriate errors with grammar usage.

The details are mostly listed rather than incorporated or developed to show an experience or event (for example, What does the pod of whales look like? And what does it mean that &#8220;the whales started to splash away and were soon out of sight?&#8221;).

References to “pod”; “sounded like a trumpet”; and “waving their flippers” refer to source #3. While the references are listed rather than integrated into a narrative, they do not interfere with the story development.

There is no dialogue, and attempts at description are limited to general opinions (e.g. “it was fantastic!”) or obvious inferences (e.g. “They sure were hungry!”) that provide a limited illustration of the experience.

There is no evidence of figurative language in this brief response. Words such as “gulp” and “trumpet” come from the sources, leaving only a few good word choices (e.g. “blasted,” “chomping,” and “gigantic”) to illustrate the brief experience.

“I was the first to spot the huge whale…it was fantastic!” and “They sure were hungry!” attempt to create a feeling of excitement, but the response overall is too brief to demonstrate an engaging style.

There is no actual plot, but rather the response is a brief account of a pod of whales passing a family.

The characters (narrator, mom and dad, and “people on the boat”) are referenced but not established. Other than referring to the ocean and a boat, there is no real setting developed.

Most details are listed, with sentences beginning mostly with &#8220;There,&#8221; &#8220;The,&#8221; &#8220;They,&#8221; or &#8220;Their&#8221; enhancing the feeling that the response is more of a list than a narrative.

The sequence of events is logical but hurried, with details listed: the whales make a noise, search for fish, wave their flippers, gulp down/chomp away at the silver fish, and leave.

The first line attempts to draw readers into the story, but the end is abrupt and unsatisfying (“All of a sudden, the whales started to splash away and were soon out of sight”).

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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: 5508

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