Grade 4

Narrative

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Ant Colony

Conventions

Development/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

The third sentence in paragraph 3 is not a sentence as written (“Nothing happened until a whole army of ants coming from another colony claiming the private territory from our colony”) but changing the word “claiming” to “claimed” would have made it complete.
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There are repeated errors with misplaced commas in compound sentences  (sentences 5, 6, 7, and 8 in the final paragraph) and a missing comma after the introductory element in the eighth sentence of the first paragraph.

There are minor grammar usage errors.
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There are a few spelling errors (e.g. “interduced”). In addition, the adjective “amazing” in the final paragraph should be “amazingly.”
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There is a single capitalization error, “Making.”

The narrative elements, like setting (“One dark night, tucked away in my bed…”) and characterization are clearly developed.

Throughout the narrative, the writer uses information from the sources (“The ant showed me many chambers like the food chamber. I saw many aphids producing honeydew.”) to create a sense of realism in an otherwise fictional story.

The writer effectively uses concrete details (e.g., “Suddenly the terrarium expanded greatly…I panicked wildly.  I ran around the place in shock, but then I saw a hill.”) making the story more exciting and interesting.

There is a bit of awkwardness, mostly due to strange transitions such as “Soon later”), but the overall style is effective.

The opening (“One dark night, tucked away in my bed, I dreamed something that was beyond reality.”) is interesting and engages the reader. The narrative’s ending follows logically from the story and makes the story feel complete. The idea of recognizing an ant from the dream is quite creative and is very satisfying.

The narrative follows a clear sequence of events leading to the climax and a quick resolution. The progression of ideas seems to be based on an attempt to cover all aspects of ant colony life rather than on crafting an engaging narrative. As a result, there is little to no conflict involving the narrator.

The writer uses a variety of transitional strategies (“Making it back to the colony,” “Right then,” “Finally”). However, the artificial—and possibly tacked on—transitions used to begin paragraphs (“Next,” “Then,” and “Right then”) are distracting and more appropriate for informational writing.

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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: 715

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