Narrative writing has been weighing heavy on my heart. I have taught 5th grade for 5 out of my 10 years of teaching. When I first started teaching, writing was put on the back burner. It wasn’t assessed in 5th grade, so it was often forgotten. Fast forward three years and the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) was established and threw us all for a loop. Every grade from 3rd and on would be assessed in one mode of writing each year. There was no way of knowing which kids would get which mode of writing. It was and still is unknown until the student opens up their Performance Task portion of their test.
I don’t consider myself an expert, however, I have done a lot of research into what it takes for a student to pass the SBA Narrative Performance Task (PT). I have read many exemplars in each grade, looked at the SBA writing rubrics, Common Core standards, and analyzed many Performance Task prompts.
If you want your students to pass the SBA Narrative PT, it’s important to understand what makes a passing score. So, I’m going to let you in on a few secrets! Three actually…
- Students must write in a logical sequence (duh, right?) But there is more to this. When looking at exemplars you can notice a huge difference between a score of a 2 and a passing score of a 3 or 4. Students that used transitional words and phrases in their text scored higher.
- Students that embedded information from the 2-3 sources they read scored much higher. I often thought students needed to quote within a narrative to show they used the sources, but that is incorrect. The students that did that scored a 1 or 2. What I mean by this is that students used the sources as inspiration for their story. For example, if the story is about Lewis and Clark, students would need to consider the time period of the story, the feelings they felt, and the experience vocabulary they might encounter. Their character shouldn’t have a cellphone, but they could have a wagon. The character may feel despair or exhaustion, but not constant happiness. Students should use words like expedition, Rocky Mountains, or illnesses.
- This brings me to my last tip. The richer the word choice, the higher a student scored. Think strong verbs, figurative language, description of feelings. A quick strategy I use is to have students highlight all their verbs and find better words using an online thesaurus.
Here is the Narrative Story Plot, key, and outline I created to go along with any narrative performance task my students will encounter. Students are always given a prompt which includes a conflict already given. Students use this tool to fill in the prompt and where it fits along the diagram. Then they consider the sources to create realistic attempts to solve their conflict and their solution.
In order to teach students how to use the Narrative Story Plot, I use mentor texts like the book, Fred Stays With Me and The Princess and the Pig. We plot them along the diagram and teach students what each number corresponds to. They totally catch on quickly.
If you’re interested in this resource, click on the picture above or check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store linked above.
Happy Story Writing!!!
