Grade 4

Narrative

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Ant Colony

Conventions

Development/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

There do not appear to be errors in sentence structure; however, it’s not always clear if the writer meant for some of the constructions to be compound sentences instead of short, simple (but grammatically correct) sentences because the writer used periods but did not follow with capital letters.
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There are frequent capitalization errors at the beginning of sentences as well as an unnecessary capital A in the first paragraph.
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There are punctuation errors. There are quite a few missing commas (e.g., in the third sentence after “When we got to the museam”).
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There are some errors in grammar usage, including using the article “a” instead of “an” before “ant” and a missing article in the fourth sentence (“I found nerf gun…”).
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There are spelling errors (e.g., “museam,” “freeked,” “holl,” “qween,” “normol”).

There is a limited use of narrative techniques (little-to-no development of the narrator, brief list of events with no dialogue or description).

The response fails to integrate any figurative language or sensory details to make the story more interesting.

Other than vague references to a “queen” and a “colony,” the writer makes no use of information in the provided source materials.

The response has a limited beginning.  The ending (“that was my story the end”) is weak.

The beginning (“One day my class was going on a field trip. We were going to a museam.”) minimally establishes a setting. There is no character development.

There is no conflict other than the general “So I was as small as a ant…freeked out.” The plot is weak with the progression of ideas being little more than a list of events loosely connected with the word “so.”

The writer’s transitional strategies are limited to the aforementioned use of “so,” “When we got to the museum,” and the two times the writer uses “and then.”

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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 4: Narrative – Ant Colony - ID: 694

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