Grade 3

Narrative

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Astronauts

Conventions

Development/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

The spelling of grade 3-appropriate words is adequate although there are errors (e.g., “stared” for “started”; “sed” for &#8220;said&#8221;). Some errors (e.g., &#8220;nerves&#8221; for “nervous” and  “Exspeshole” for &#8220;especially&#8221;) are not grade 3 spelling words.
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Missing and/or unnecessary commas (“After, she finished that the engine broke down and she got right back to work”) are not 3rd grade-required punctuation skills.
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There is an error with subject-verb agreement (“She and Lilah wants”) Control of other errors, such as errors with frequently confused words (e.g., brake/break; of/off) are not required at grade 3.

Although there are problems with sentence structure (“So here are the jobs Sydney trained to fix the space shuttle if it breaks down and Lilah’s job is to leader”), these errors do not reflect grade 3-required skills, and they do not interfere with meaning.
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Errors with missing capitals for proper nouns are forgivable (a 3rd grade student may not know that the “Big Dipper” and “Little Dipper” are proper nouns).

The development of key narrative elements does advance the story. For example, descriptive details reveal some characters traits: Sydney thought the ride into space “took for ever,” and the narrator just wanted to “see stars.&#8221;

However, dialogue and/or a clearer conflict (other than the general “a gear broke” and the “engine broke down”) would likely be needed for a top scoring narrative.

There are sufficient connections to source materials (e.g., astronaut jobs, and equipment failures), and elaboration for these source details is adequate. For example, references to weightlessness are nicely integrated with an anecdote about eating fruit: “So I fixed up three bowls of fruit. But there was a problem because the fruit was so light that it floated and then we all started laughing!” But other details are not as well-elaborated, (e.g., “a gear broke, Sydney got right to work, she fixed it.” Although this elaboration seems simplistic, not much more could be expected with no prior knowledge about spaceship mechanics).  The details are often too list-like.

The vocabulary is general (“happy, fruit”).

The style is not distinctive, but it is consistent enough to support the narrative purpose (“We stared lift of. We were all so nerves” [nervous]).

Except for “Hi my name is…,” the story has a nice beginning that sets up the narrative elements including characters and the mission.

The ending feels rushed, and there is some confusion (“Once the space shuttle landed Lilah was the first one to fly of the shuttle”), but the final line offers a sense of closure. The story is also nicely framed by the narrator stating she “just wanted to see the stars” in the story&#8217;s beginning, returning to “I got to see the stars….Exspeshole [especially] the stars at night!” in the closing.

Narrative transitions are appropriate (e.g., “Today,” “While,” “Then,” “So,” “After”).

Despite adequate transitions, the sequence of events could be more even as there are minor gaps. For example, “Sydney…decided to sleep but once we got into space she was not happy.” (Why? How do we know?).

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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: 638

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