Grade 4

Narrative

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Ant Colony

Conventions

Development/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

There are no errors in sentence structure.

There are no capitalization errors (presumably, the capitals for “NO!!!” are for effect).

There are missing commas in compound sentences (e.g., third and fifth sentence in the response and the next-to-last sentence in the response).

There are some errors in grammar usage. For example, “I thought if the day already ended but NO!!!!” This sentence is a bit awkward.
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There are just a few spelling errors (e.g., “wierd”; “greatful”; “suprised”).

Referencing information from the sources, the writer identifies specifics about ants, such as how scouting ants search for food, to make the story more interesting.

The response provides some concrete details (e.g., “but I felt wierd as some of the other ants were glaring at me.”) making the narrative more descriptive.

The writer gives the ants personality (“some…glaring at me,” “She wanted to do something for…me…She was sad”) creating a style that is indicative of narrative writing.

The beginning is somewhat simplistic.

The plot of the narrative is evident, and the writer establishes a conflict beyond the obvious shrinking, with the intervention of the human actually helping to set up the logical resolution (the queen grants the narrator his/her wish).

There are a variety of transitions (e.g., “Later, as I looked around,” “As I stood up,” “Before that though”) used throughout the narrative to effectively connect ideas and help with the progression of the storyline.

The sequence of events in the response follows a logical order progressing to the climax and completing the story with a happy ending (“After the wonderful feast, Iwas sent back home and was back to normal.”).

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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

Donec sed odio dui. Aenean eu leo quam. Pellentesque ornare sem lacinia quam venenatis vestibulum. Nulla vitae elit libero, a pharetra augue. Nullam id dolor id nibh ultricies vehicula ut id elit. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

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: 709

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