Grade 3

Narrative

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Astronauts

Conventions

Development/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

The lack of proper punctuation for dialogue (a 3rd grade-required skill) does cause confusion, but ultimately does not interfere with understanding. There are a missing apostrophe for the contraction &#8220;you’re&#8221; (“youre”) and a possessive (“Evens mind”).

Spelling errors are minimal (e.g., “exersiez,” “finnaly,” “serously.” Other words—alien, angrily, annoyed, and seriously—are not grade 3 words.)

There are no errors with grammar usage. Grade 3 students are not responsible for frequently confused words (&#8220;to&#8221; instead of &#8220;too&#8221;; &#8220;youre&#8221; instead of &#8220;your&#8221;).

While there are some errors with run-on and sentence fragments, these conventions are not required for grade 3.

There are missing capitals that cause occasional reader confusion (for example, much of the dialogue fails to begin with a capital letter: &#8220;Emma said anoyed “then what is it”&#8221;).

Although there is some attempted development of the events via dialogue, the overall elaboration is uneven. The characters reveal themselves with dialogue, and—more specifically—through the adjectives and adverbs used to describe their words (annoyed, calmly, nervously). Other plot elements, however, are less clear.

We have a general idea of the mission (to collect rocks) but no real idea of how the crew crash-landed on an alien planet. Resolutions to the conflicts (aliens and space ship damages) are also vague (e.g., how was Hannah saved?).

There are references to source details: the idea of bird legs and its effect on astronauts is developed; other details (the need to exercise and “body changes”) are listed but not developed.

The  language/vocabulary use is mostly general (“I finnaly fixed it” – it’s not clear what “it” was).

The narrative does maintain a consistently lively style, again, primarily through the characters’ spoken interactions (e.g., “seriously do you even know…”).

The story&#8217;s beginning is limited. The writer “launches” readers into the story with the countdown but fails to provide any introduction of the characters or description of the setting, mission, or problem. The ending is abrupt and provides little sense of closure: “Even wants to return.”

The progression of ideas is somewhat unclear, in part because their mission is unclear. Seemingly, the characters are in space to collect rocks, speculating about all the things that can go wrong, and then they crash on an alien planet. Something is broken, they fix it, and then they “got home.”

The few formal transitions are limited to “when” and “then.”

The story is primarily advanced via conversation between speakers, which could be an effective strategy, but because the narrative situation is never effectively set up, the sequence of events gets somewhat confusing and there are gaps (e.g., “Even said loudly ‘Well be quiet we have to whisper’ Emma whispered. ‘Now to save Hannah’ after they saved Hannah now let’s go home’ Even said ‘I finnaly fixed it.’”).

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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 3: Narrative – Astronauts - ID: 599

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