Grade 7

Narrative

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Mount Everest

Conventions

Development/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

There are two instances of run-on sentences within dialogue (“‘Hey calm down we&#8217;re barley there yet are you&#8217;re already shaking.’”; “‘I want to do this I&#8217;ve been training for almost four years.’”).
&nbsp;

Shifts in verb tense are somewhat distracting. It begins in present tense (“It’s currently early in the day”), but shifts to past tense when the dialogue starts (“‘Are you ready?’ I asked James.”). Two lines later it shifts to present, then immediately to past again (“As we get there I started to shake.”). There is a shift back to present tense one last time in the next-to-last paragraph (“It’s been about almost two months.”) where it remains for the rest of the story. The misuse of “are” instead of “and” causes confusion in one line of dialogue (“we’re barley there yet are you’re already shaking”) and a missing preposition also causes some confusion (“I start feel accomplished.”).

Spelling is generally correct except for the use of the word “barley” instead of “barely.”

The dialogue has some errors in both capitalization and punctuation (e.g., “‘Yeah, I am.’ He responded.” should be “‘Yeah, I am,’ he responded.”).

In addition to an unnecessary comma in the second sentence (“I get up and eat a hearty breakfast, because today is the day I climb Mt. Everest.”), there are also some missing commas following introductory elements (“As we are driving in[,] I can already picture myself…”; “When I get there[,] I walk in his house…”).

This response provides superficial elaboration using dialogue. Other than dialogue, narrative techniques are lacking in this response.

The two main characters, the narrator and the Sherpa, James, are underdeveloped.

The writer hints at details from the sources by alluding to the amount of time the main character states he has trained for the event and the fact that he is taking a Sherpa along on the climb.

The writer uses some concrete language (“mumbled,” “scolded”); however, it does little to advance the purpose of the response. The response is brief but appropriate to the style. There is a strong sense of style (e.g., the last two paragraphs describing the exhaustion and struggle are nicely captured via several short sentences).

The response has a structure that includes a beginning, middle, and end. Overall, the limited sequence of events follows a logical order, using dialogue to advance the story. This response provides a weak and unsatisfying closing to the narrative.

The writer attempts to create a setting in the opening paragraph (“I am currently in Nepal right now staying at a fancy hotel.”). However, the setting for the actual climb is not described at all. Although the narrative includes the mention of a character, James, the narrator fails to establish characterization other than the fact that James is a Sherpa. Additionally, the narrative spends too much time describing arriving at the trail head and almost no time describing the actual climb.

There are a few transitions, used primarily to indicate changes in time (“When we get there…,” “As we are driving in…,” “Hours later…”).

Content Explorer

Sample Items Website

Tools for Teachers

Smarter Reporting

Remote Teaching and Learning

More Resources for Teachers

Privacy

Diversity, Inclusion & Equity

Web Accessibility Statement

Policy

Instagram

YouTube

Pinterest

Twitter

Facebook

Connect

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

Donec sed odio dui. Aenean eu leo quam. Pellentesque ornare sem lacinia quam venenatis vestibulum. Nulla vitae elit libero, a pharetra augue. Nullam id dolor id nibh ultricies vehicula ut id elit. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

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 7: Narrative – Mount Everest - ID: 936

More Resources for Teachers

Connect

Policy