Gloss: The spider is 1,000,000 pounds. It is bigger than the whole world. Bigger than the universe (?). Bigger than a building. Bigger than anything. His name is Henry.
Notes: The student describes a spider using comparisons.
Ideas and Content: The student's ideas are original and the student gives details of the size and name of the spider.
Organization and Focus: The student's writing addresses the prompt and focuses on describing the spider. The writer develops the idea of how big the spider is by giving numerous size comparisons ("bigger than a building" etc.).
Style: The student uses specific descriptive words to tell about the spider's size --the spider is "1,000,000 pounds" and "bigger than the whole world..." The writer repeats "bigger than" for emphasis. The reader is able to tell that the writer is fascinated by the gigantic size of this spider named Henry.
Conventions: Though the letters are legible and easy to distinguish, the paper is somewhat difficult to read because the student does not understand spacing, punctuation, or proper use of lower case and capital letters. The student writes some complete sentences ("It is bigger than the whole world.") but does not use any punctuation.
Notes: The student describes a spider with one long sentence.
Ideas and Content: The student includes details of appearance and that the spider "stays in its web" and "eats bugs."
Organization and Focus: The student stays focused on writing a description. The student uses "because" effectively to sequence and connect why the spider does what it does: "always stays in its web because it is shy," "eats bugs because it is nasty."
Style: Sentence variety is lacking since the student repeatedly uses "and" to make a run-on sentence. The student uses descriptive words to help the reader get a picture of a "big," "brown," and "shy" spider. The use of words like "scary" and "nasty" give evidence of the writer's personality.
Conventions: The student does not appear to understand sounds in blends and digraphs in sight words such as "this" and "stay," but spells c-v-c words like "big," "web," and "and" correctly.
Gloss: Once upon a time there lived a spider named Sally. She was happy, but she had a friend who got blown away. It was scary. She seen something. What is it? Maybe a screechy bat, or a spooky ghost, or a gooey goblin, or a hairy monster. Oh! It is you, my best friend ever. I missed you so much. I love you.
Notes: The student writes a fictional story.
Ideas and Content: The student uses the spider to create an original story. She includes details of characters (Sally and her friend), as well as what happened (her friend was blown away), and that it was scary.
Organization and Focus: The student writes about a spider using a storytelling format and maintains this organization and format throughout. She uses logical transitions to explain that the spider “was happy, but she had a friend who got blown away….”
Style: Even though the student writes the paper as one long sentence punctuated at the end, the paper contains many complete sentences with subjects and predicates. True sentence breakdown shows variety. Corrected with punctuation, it would read, “Once upon a time there lived a spider named Sally. She was happy, but she had a friend who got blown away. It was scary. She seen something….” The use of adjectives such as “screechy” and “spooky” add color to the story.
Conventions: The student appears to understand the rules of capitalization because she correctly uses capitals multiple times (“Sally,” I, and the first word in the sentence) even though she writes one run-on sentence.
Gloss: My spider has a web.
Notes: The student uses beginning sounds only to write one sentence.
Ideas and Content: The student includes one detail, “has a web,” but it is not very original since the web was provided on the prompt paper and since most spiders have webs. The student is confused when reading what he or she wrote.
Organization and Focus: The writing addresses the prompt; it is clear and easy to follow, “My spider has a web,” but it does not contain multiple ideas, so it must receive a score of 0 for order. Because the paper is so short, true focus can not be assessed. The idea is complete, but not quite developed, so it receives a score of 1 in development.
Style: The student’s writing does not give a description of the web or lead the reader to know more about the writer’s personality or experiences. With only one sentence, the student must score a 0 for sentence variety.
Conventions: The student’s letters are legible, but there is no space between the words which makes it appear that it is one long word. The writer uses initial sounds of all words except “web,” where the last sound, b, is written. Because the writing is in all capitals without punctuation, it is clear the student does not understand sentence and capitalization conventions.
Gloss: Spiders (title) Some spiders are poisonous, and some are deadly and bite. And some are scary and make webs.
Notes: The student has written an informational piece about spiders.
Ideas and Content: The student lists specific details about spiders.
Organization and Focus: The writer gives the piece a title “Spiders” and stays focused with an informational tone throughout the piece. The reader may be confused by the order of the ideas because all of the ideas are connected with “and.”
Style: The use of “some” at the beginning of each fact joins the ideas through parallesim, but also makes for a lack of variety in words. The words “poisonous” and “deadly” add color to the piece.
Conventions: The student shows a beginning understanding of punctuation usage, but does not use any capital letters, even for the first word in his or her writing. The student correctly spells “poisonous,” “and,” “bite,” and “webs.” Even though “mace” (“make”) is spelled incorrectly, the student appears to have a solid handle on spelling.
Gloss: A spider caught a butterfly. It took it to the web. I sawed it. I told my mom. She screamed. It hurt my ears.
Notes: The student retells a short personal incident with specific details, but his or her writing lacks descriptive words.
Ideas and Content: The student includes many details such as who (mom, student, spider, and butterfly), what (caught a butterfly), how (took it to its web, saw it), etc.
Organization and Focus: The narrative flows in logical order from watching the student seeing the spider catch the butterfly and take it to the web, to telling his or her mom, to hearing the mother scream and hurt the student’s ears.
Style: The spider, web, and the butterfly are not described with any adjectives, but the student clearly portrays a personal experience by relating how the scream “hurt my erz.”
Conventions: The student did not correctly spell “web,” but has standard spellings for “the,” “it,” and “to.” The handwriting is legible and well spaced, but there are two letters, p and m, that are incorrectly written to look like q and w. Capital letters appear in the middle of words.
Gloss: My spider is big. I like my spider. Can you see my spider? We like my spider. You see my spider? I like my spider.
Notes: The student uses standard spellings and correct sentence format, but says very little with a beginning-reader style text about a spider.
Ideas and Content: The only ideas presented are that the writer likes the spider and that the spider is big.
Organization and Focus: The writer begins by telling that the spider is big, but then does not continue to tell more about the spider. The writing loses focus from being about the spider to being a discussion with the reader (“Do you like my spider?”).
Style: The writer’s style mimics that of a beginning reader book and does not show the student’s personality. The writer does not use colorful words to bring the writing to life and uses only one descriptive word, “big.”
Conventions: The student has legible writing and although one letter is reversed (b for d in one writing of spider) the student demonstrates an overall understanding of handwriting, spacing, capitalization, sentence conventions, and grade-level spelling.
Gloss: Draw a spider. Write about the spider. (copied)
Notes: Prompt is copied verbatim.
Ideas and Content: The student does not include any personal ideas and content, but merely copies the prompt.
Organization and Focus: Scores for organization can not be given because the student copied.
Style: The student does not demonstrate any personal style.
Conventions: The student’s handwriting is scored, but the other conventions receive a 0 because it is not clear if the student understands the conventions of spelling and punctuation or simply copied.
Gloss: My mom don’t like spiders. They are poisonous. My mom kills spiders. My mom hates spiders. Spiders bite. It hurts.
Notes: The student tells about her mother and spiders.
Ideas and Content: The student uses original ideas and includes details about spiders, how the mother feels about spiders, and what she does to spiders.
Organization and Focus: The focus of the paper is a little unclear because some of the focus is on the mom’s attitude toward spiders (“My mom don’t like spiders.”), some of the paper is about spiders in general (“spiders bite”), and part is from the student’s feelings about spiders (“it hurts”). Adding “because” would help writer connect the ideas in a more logical sequence (e.g., “My mom don’t like spiders [because] they are poisonous.”)
Style: The writing is repetitive with the use of “My mom…” to begin three of the six sentences, but does show some variety with the other three sentences. The student makes an attempt to use larger descriptive vocabulary with the word “poisonous.”
Conventions: The student correctly punctuates all but two of the sentences, though the student uses capitalization randomly. The spacing of some words is confusing, and the last letter of one word becomes the first letter of the next (“My MoM ci/s/idrs”—“My mom kill/s/piders.”)
Gloss: Spiders can bite. Some spiders are poisonous. They spin webs to eat food. They keep the other animals away. There is a lot of different kinds of spiders. Some can be mean or some can be nice to you. The bad ones are Tarantulas.
Notes: The student writes an informational piece about spiders.
Ideas and Content: Though the student’s ideas are not new because they are facts about spiders, they receive a 2 for original ideas because they are the student’s original presentation of facts and they do not resemble other student’s papers in the class or have not been copied from books and posters.
Organization and Focus: The focus stays clearly on information about spiders.
Style: The writing demonstrates the writer’s personality through a keen interest in spider facts.
Conventions: Though the student understands sentence structure such as “Spitrs Can bit” and “Sum Spitrs are poysnis,” he or she does not understand punctuation. Although the first word of the sentence is capitalized and the majority of the letters are lowercase, there are still random capital letters that make it clear the student does not have a solid understanding of capitalization.