Argumentative Writing FSA Scoring Argumentative Writing

There are three categories… 1) Purpose, Focus, and Organization 2) Evidence and Elaboration 3) Conventions of Standard English (basically… grammar and such) (You receive three scores. The highest you can get is 4/4/2. The lowest is 1/1/1. Well, technically 0/0/0.)

Purpose, Focus, and organization Want a perfect score? To receive a 4: Must have: Strongly maintained claim with little or no loosely related material CLEARLY addressed opposing claim Skillfully uses transitions to clarify relationships between ideas Logical order of ideas from beginning to end (w/ intro & conclusion) Appropriate style and tone

Purpose, Focus, and organization Skills not up to snuff? 3: Maintain claim, but sketchy material present Opposing claim is there, but not THERE Transitions are good, not super creative Appropriate style and tone 2: Focused claim, but a tad unclear Opposing claim is “insufficiently” addressed Inconsistent transitions Idea progression is uneven. This really makes zero sense, y’all. 1: Absent/confusing claim Missing opposing claim Few/no transitional strategies Lots of extra ideas that make zero sense No enough writing to judge style or tone

Evidence and elaboration Want a perfect score? To receive a 4: You must have: Smoothly integrated, thorough, and relevant evidence, including precise references to sources Demonstrates understanding of topic/text CLEAR and effective expression of ideas, using precise language Academic and rockin’ vocab Varied sentence structure

Evidence and elaboration Not feeling like a rockstar? 3: General relevant evidence, though references are not precise Adequate use of elaborative techniques Adequate expression of ideas Vocab is aight. Some sentence structure variation 2: Weak use of sources Repetitive techniques Imprecise or simplistic expression of ideas Vocab is not on point at alllllllll. Simple. Most sentences are limited to simple structure. 1: Did you even use evidence? Is it even relevant? Expression of ideas that is vague, unclear, or confusing

Conventions Want a perfect score? To receive a 2*** (remember, the highest you can receive in this category is a 2): You must have: Maybe minor errors but no patterns Awesome use of punctuation, capitalization, sentence formation, and spelling

conventions Got a 1? That means you: Had a lot of errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation, sentence formation, etc.

Did you get a zero?!

Guessing scores Your team will have a certain amount of time at each table. Write down the predicted score of that essay! (For every score that your team gets correct, you’ll ALL receive bonus points on this week’s vocab test!)

9th grade prompt example

10th grade prompt example