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Animals and Their Surroundings Informational Performance Task
This performance task comes from the Smarter Balanced practice test. This specific task asks students to read three informational articles describing how animals adapt to their environment. Students answer three research questions (constructed- and selected-response items) that require them to evaluate sources and identify evidence to support ideas. Finally, students are asked to use more than one of the sources to write an informational article supporting a main idea about animals and where they live.
Smarter Balanced Resources
Download Student Work and Scoring Examples
Research Questions
Full Write Essays
| Organization & Purpose |
Evidence & Elaboration |
Conventions | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scored Student Samples |
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| Unscored Student Samples |
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| Scoring Key |
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Download Case Studies
Each of the two case studies provides an analysis of an individual student’s responses to all of the questions in a performance task, unpacks the scoring, and considers next steps for supporting the student to demonstrate college and career readiness.