Grade 4

Narrative

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Ant Colony

Conventions

Development/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

Each of the sentences in paragraph 2 has elements of being a run-on, particularly the final sentence of that paragraph, which also appears to have missing words: “…oh no how they get home?”. The first sentence of paragraph 3 requires an “and” to make sense: “Then a suspicious ant that the girls recognized as a worker ant came forward [and] noticed that they were not ants…”).
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Capitalization is generally correct, although there are a couple instances where the response does not use a capital letter to begin a sentence (paragraph 3: “both girls leaned a little to far…” and “when those ants realized that they were not enough…”).

Commas are needed before coordinating conjunctions (“Sabrina and Daphne both loved rain[,] but this time they were just sitting in it,” and “Ants surried away here and there[,] and some soldier ants came to help drive out Sabrina and Daphne.”). When the worker ant yelled “intruder” in paragraph 3, it should be punctuated with quotation marks since it is dialogue.
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Grammar usage is generally correct, although the response uses the wrong form of “too” in paragraph 3 (“both girls leaned little to far…”) and the phrase needs the article “a” to read smoothly.
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Spelling is generally correct, although several grade-level words are spelled incorrectly including “Thier,” “geting,” “realeased,” “starrted,” and “normall.”

The writer uses information from the sources to add details to the story making it more interesting (e.g., “The ants were completely ready to bite them to protect the colony.In one chamber they ran into a bunch of aphids! Soon the girls found themselves being chased through a series of tunnels ! Suddenly the girls came into a nursery chamber and saw a  small leaf full of a certain substance.”).

The integration of text information is particularly effective because the writer uses “the chase” as a narrative device allowing the integration of source information about the role of each ant in the colony.

In addition, the writer gives the ants personality (“the suspicious ant…yelled intruder!”) developing engaging characters while integrating factual information.

The writer effectively uses concrete details (e.g., “the girls felt with horror that they were morphing smaller and smaller…”) to make the narrative more descriptive.

Despite some repetition in the beginning, overall, the style is distinctive with phrases such as “Little did they know…” and “agreed to stay away from anthills during rain” adding personality to the characters.

In the opening, the writer attempts to establish the setting and characters (“One day there were two girls and they were playing outside in the cold wet rain…”). The narrative’s ending is appropriately satisfying to the reader, making the story feel finished and providing a sense of closure, especially with the rain seemingly instigating the narrative event, and the weather clearing up signaling the end of the story.

The writer establishes a conflict (being chased by the ants) and provides a resolution to the conflict along with a series of falling actions.

The writer utilizes effective transitional strategies (e.g., “Little did they know,” “Suddenly,” “Fortunately”) throughout the narrative.

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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: 712

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