Understanding Proficiency provides resources that guide educators in analyzing student work on performance tasks in order to develop a deeper understanding of the English Language Arts (ELA)/Literacy Common Core State Standards.
What you’ll find:
- Examples of student responses to Smarter Balanced ELA/Literacy performance tasks — administered, scored and annotated by teachers — for all score levels and for all tested grades (grades 3–8 and high school)
- Case studies that provide analysis of individual students’ work across all of the questions in the performance tasks, including samples from English learners
- Teacher reflections and videos featuring educators engaged in scoring and analyzing student work
- Professional development activities to support educators in leveraging these resources for their own learning
Select a grade level to explore grade-specific resources
About Smarter Balanced ELA/Literacy Performance Tasks
Smarter Balanced ELA/Literacy performance tasks allow the evaluation of higher order skills, asking students to read multiple informational texts and use evidence from those texts to produce a developed piece of writing. The tasks have two parts: Part I, the research questions, asks students to read source materials and answer constructed- and selected-response items, and Part II asks students to plan, write, and revise a fully developed essay based on the source materials.
Each student is assigned one of a variety of writing purposes (Informational, Opinion, Narrative, Explanatory, and Argumentative), and each student full write is evaluated on three distinct rubrics (Organization and Purpose; Evidence and Elaboration/Development and Elaboration; and Conventions).
- Performance Task: Each student is assigned a task with one of a variety of writing purposes (Informational, Opinion, Narrative, Explanatory, and Argumentative), and each student full write is evaluated on three distinct rubrics (Organization and Purpose; Evidence and Elaboration/ Development and Elaboration; and Conventions).
- Research Questions: ELA/Literacy performance tasks ask students to complete three research questions, including constructed- and selected-response items, about the sources they read.
- Constructed Responses: Understanding Proficiency features scored, annotated student responses at each score point on the two constructed-response questions that are hand scored. To see the third question, review the case studies or Smarter Balanced scoring guide.
- Full-Write Essay: The ELA performance tasks ask students to use the sources to write a developed essay or “full write,” which is evaluated on three distinct writing dimensions. Examples of scored, annotated student full writes for each score point for each of the writing dimensions can be found below.
- Organization and Purpose: This dimension allows for the evaluation of the development of an effective organizational structure that introduces and remains focused on a controlling idea, uses transitional strategies to connect ideas within and between paragraphs, uses an introduction and conclusion, and provides a logical progression of ideas.
- Evidence and Elaboration: This dimension allows for the evaluation of the effective integration of evidence from source material, including elaborative techniques, citations, and appropriate style and vocabulary. *For narrative performance tasks, this writing dimension is called Development and Elaboration.
- Conventions: This dimension allows for the evaluation of the use of correct sentence formation, punctuation, capitalization, grammar usage, and spelling.
- Research Questions: ELA/Literacy performance tasks ask students to complete three research questions, including constructed- and selected-response items, about the sources they read.