Grade 4

Narrative

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Ant Colony

Conventions

Development/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

Awkwardness in the second sentence could be corrected by eliminating the second instance of the words “as her” (Her name was as long and beautiful as her blond and shiny hair.”). Near the end of the story, there is a potential fragment (“McKenzie with the blinding magic of light, Ella with fire, Iridessa with ice, and Jessica with dark.”), but the writer likely was intentionally doing this for effect, listing the new powers possessed by the friends.
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There are no errors in capitalization.

Punctuation in this response is strong for grade 4, including the use of commas for introductory elements, a grade 5 skill.

There are no obvious errors in grammar usage.

Spelling is generally correct, with minor issues relating to the use of compound words: “fairywings” should be two separate words, while “nick-name(d)” does not require a hyphen.

The characters are adequately developed in this story. The narrative describes the characters in great detail, providing readers with an effective picture of the characters.

The story’s events, albeit a bit repetitive, are adequately developed by the writer integrating information from the sources (e.g., “she got dragged to the egg caring room. She got dragged to the queen room”) to add details and description. The connections to the source materials, however, are very general, limited to brief references to colony characteristics.

While the experience narrated in this response is adequately elaborated, there are some inconsistencies. Specifically, some explanations do not sufficiently explain some plot elements. The narrative suddenly shifts into an action sequence (“Before Allison could speak”), but then jumps to a confusing description of “trying her new nickname,” which didn’t “work.” Additional explanations would clarify other events as well (e.g., how did the girl-ants use their magic powers to rescue Allison?).

The writer uses descriptive language (e.g., “giant colorful wings that looked like fairywings”) and some figurative language (e.g., “Her name was almost as long and beautifulas her blond and shiny as her hair.”) to make the story more interesting.  The language, including figurative language, does enhance the narrative (e.g., “blinding magic of light,” “Iridessa called herself the Fire Ant and got awesome dragon wings! Jessica called her self Black Ant and got mysterious, dark wings”).

The style of the response is adequate and appropriate to the task (e.g. “The magic of friendship was strong, but not strong enough. Meanwhile, the new friends learned that they had new powers! McKenzie with the blinding magic of light, Ella with fire, Iridessawith ice, and Jessica with dark”).

The plot elements for this narrative are generally established, although there are some minor flaws. The conflict is evident (Allison is captured), but the actual events are vague (“She got dragged” from the egg caring room to the queen room. She is then rescued by her new friends’ powers of light, fire, ice, and dark).

The beginning of the narrative provides effective and elaborate descriptions for the five characters and their physical attributes, yet there is only a vague reference to the setting (anthill). The ending is general, although it does offer closure (“have more adventures”).

The sequence of events is overall adequate, although there are some mildly confusing connections.  For example, the detail “Luckily, [Jessica] was wearing her ant antenna headband” is—as presented—not connected to any event.

Transitions are overall adequate (“Just then”; “From then on”), occasionally providing somewhat loose connections (“Before Allison could speak…”; “Meanwhile…”).

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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: 725

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