Grade 6

Explanatory

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

World's Fair

Conventions

Evidence/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

There are no grade 6-appropriate errors with sentence structure.

There are no grade 6-appropriate errors with grammar usage.

There are no grade 6-appropriate errors with  capitalization.

There should be a comma after the interrupter “held in 1893.”
&nbsp;

There are errors with ie/ei constructions (&#8220;recieved&#8221;; &#8220;thier&#8221;).

There is some evidence from at least three of the source materials, although they are unattributed. The detail about the numbers of people who attended the 6-month event is not well integrated (presumably, it is to set the context for the impact of electricity, but that’s not well explained).

The minimal examples provided, however, are presented list-like and almost completely unelaborated. Understandably, the details about AC/DC electricity are not explained in the texts, nor are they something 6th graders would know about; but other details are only minimally explained or elaborated. The one exception would be in paragraph 4, where the writer draws a conclusion about relatives telling relatives to support the controlling idea about “making electricity itself widely known.”

The language use is mostly general but appropriate, and the style is overall appropriate.

This response does demonstrate a sense of appropriate organization, beginning with an adequate controlling idea about the major impact of the fair (“electricity”). There is a conclusion, but it is somewhat weak, ineffectively echoing the introductory sentence.

The controlling idea is mostly sustained, and the progression of ideas is evident (electric inventors, limited examples of inventions, popularity of electric inventions).

There are nearly no transitions to show connections within and among the ideas.

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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.

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 6: Explanatory – World's Fair - ID: 885

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