Grade 6

Explanatory

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

World's Fair

Conventions

Evidence/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

There is a pattern of errors with sentence structure including run-on sentences (the last sentence in paragraph 3, the fourth sentence in paragraph 4, and the final sentence in the essay are all run-ons).
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There are few errors with grammar usage (e.g., &#8220;a impactful&#8221;).
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There are missing apostrophes (“lets” instead of “let’s” in paragraph 1 and “cities way” should be “city’s way” in paragraph 4) and unnecessary commas (“lighting likely impacted many visitors, and was the cause….”).

There are errors with capitalization at the beginning of some sentences.
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There are spelling errors, which may largely be attributed to typing but still count as errors (“definetly,” “Towr,” “yaers,”  “n” (in), “puting”).

This response shows adequate use of a variety of source details that are adequately integrated but unattributed to sources. Specifically, body paragraph 1 uses several details from Source #1, body paragraph 2 includes details from Source #3, and the 3rd body paragraph uses information from Source #4.

The elaboration, however, is weak, relying primarily on summary of source materials. These summaries are sometimes very close paraphrases of source materials (e.g., “But, the offical reason of the fair may be special to some, but not as impacting sa the other reasons, and that is the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in America”) mostly repeats the statement “Of course, the official reason for the fair was important, but not nearly as exciting: the fair commemorated the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in America.” Here, using “not as impacting” as an interpretation of “important, but not nearly as exciting” is a low-level inference at best. As another example, adding the descriptors “interesting” and “interestingly” (“And there were also some very interesting inventors at the fair too. Inventers such as…HJ Heinz, who interestingly started by selling pickles”) does not really develop the text detail about H. J. Heinz and his pickles. In general, although the response incorporates an adequate variety of specific details, the presentation of text is not developed adequately to support any thesis about the fair’s impact.

The language is mostly adequate for the audience and purpose despite some general and repetitive phrases (e.g., “big step forward,” “very exciting,” “interesting,” “interestingly”).

Attempts to engage the audience with a “folksy” style seems appropriate for a “World’s Fair school event” (e.g., “Well. lets take a look inside the fair and see”). Rhetorical questions and exclamatory sentences also reflect this style. Overall, this response has enough qualities of the rubric 3 (varied evidence, language, and style) to overcome the relative weak use of elaboration techniques.

The introduction attempts to engage the reader with a rhetorical question but fails to provide a clear controlling idea other than questioning the impact (which comes from the prompt).  The conclusion also fails to make a clear assertion about the impact of the fair despite suggesting three possibilities, which summarize the body paragraphs.
Note: The purpose of the task is explanatory (as opposed to argumentative), so the lack of a clearly stated thesis/controlling idea is less troubling than it would be if there were no clear claim in an argumentative task.

The progression of ideas in the body of the essay is clear, although the information from the sources is mostly listed.

There are formulaic transitions beginning each body paragraph (“First,” “Next,” “Finally”) as well as “And” and “But” connecting ideas within paragraphs. The recurring use of the word “impact/impacted” is repetitive but does serve to unify the response by circling back to the intended controlling idea.

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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: 890

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