Grade 7

Narrative

Writing Extended Response

Compose Full Texts

Mount Everest

Conventions

Development/Elaboration

Organization/Purpose

There are a few awkward sentences that are confusing to the reader (e.g., “Although, I remember from my 3 years of training that when I came to the spot where i see a huge peice if ice that i should use my ice axe and break off as much as possible.”). Overall, the most problematic sentence structure errors are found in the way in which the writer structured the dialogue. There is a run-on sentence in the last paragraph of the response (“‘Now hurry and get home I made your favorite dinner and for dessert there is choclate icecream.’”).

There are some grammar usage errors with frequently confused words (“to” for “too”) and errors with verb tense switches (e.g., in paragraph 2 the verb tense switches from present to past, but then paragraph 4 has some present tense usage again, causing mild confusion).
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There are some mistakes in spelling (e.g., “mountian,” “gonon,” “climed,” “choclate,” “bumoed,” “peice,” “contined,” “icecream”).
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The personal pronoun “I” is not consistently capitalized.

There are missing commas throughout the response, including commas in compound sentences (“I had been training for 3 years[,] but as I climed higher the snow became much steeper.”) and commas after introductory elements (“Pumping with excitement[,] I used my radio phone and called Sarah.”).

This somewhat brief narrative relays a climbing experience, but the details about the narrator and wife are better-developed than details about the actual climb. Specifically, the narrator’s and Sarah’s characters are effectively developed through their actions and dialogue (e.g., &#8220;&#8221;Be careful Michael&#8221; [Sarah] creid with much worry in her voice,&#8221; and &#8220;All i could picture was Sarah chanting in my mind &#8220;keep going Michael”&#8221;). However, details about Mount Everest are general and undeveloped (e.g., &#8220;While I was climbing I bumoed into this big chunk of ice. I did not know how I was going to get around it!&#8221;).  The inconsistent use of narrative techniques to develop the experience detracts from the overall effectiveness of the narrative.

There are some general references to source materials (e.g., crampons, effects of high elevation, ice).

The language use is uneven: effective in places (e.g., onomatopoeia &#8211; “Craacckkkk”; &#8220;pumping with excitement&#8221;); somewhat repetitive in others (e.g., three years of training is mentioned three times); and imprecise (“bumped” into a chunk of ice). There is a sense of emerging style (e.g., the balance between short and long sentence to begin the story and the quip about chocolate adding some [7th-grade] humor).

The story has a clear beginning that draws the reader into Michael’s world. The ending is adequate, if a bit unrealistic, but the final phone call does circle back to the beginning with references to the narrator’s wife “Sarah,” who also provides the narrator with motivation midway through the journey.

This nice organizing strategy frames the sequence of events, although there are some minor flaws in the progression of ideas. For example, it’s not clear how long it takes the narrator to get to 30,000 feet (where the main character deals with a chunk of ice), but from there, the narration jumps ahead 21 days to the end with no further details about the journey.

Despite the relative weakness with time lapses, other plot elements help create an overall sense of completeness.

Specifically, the setting is briefly described in the first paragraph, but the narrator’s and Sarah’s characters are effectively shown, and the point of view is consistently maintained.

Transitions are adequate (&#8220;After,&#8221; &#8220;Before,&#8221; &#8220;Then,&#8221; &#8220;At first,&#8221; &#8220;While&#8221;).

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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 7: Narrative – Mount Everest - ID: 961

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