ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS

EXPOSITORY WRITING RUBRIC

SKILL 6 5
AREA Responses at this level:
Meaning: the extent convey an accurate and in-
to which the depth understanding of the
writing exhibits topic, audience, and purpose
sound for the writing task
understanding, offer insightful and thorough
analysis, and analysis and explanation in
explanation, of support of the topic
the writing task
and text(s)
Development: the develop ideas clearly and
extent to which ideas fully, effectively integrating
are elaborated using and elaborating on specific
specific and relevant textual evidence from a
details and/or variety of sources
evidence to support effectively discriminate
the thesis between relevant and
irrelevant information and
between fact and opinion
Organization: the skillfully establish and
extent to which the maintain consistent focus on a
writing establishes a clear and compelling thesis
clear thesis and exhibit logical and coherent
maintains direction, structure with claims,
focus, and coherence evidence and interpretations
that convincingly support the
thesis
make skillful use of
transition words and phrases
Language: the are stylistically
extent to which the sophisticated, using language
writing reveals an that is precise and engaging,
awareness of with a notable sense of voice
audience and purpose and awareness of audience
through word choice and purpose
and sentence variety effectively incorporate a
range of varied sentence
patterns to reveal syntactic
fluency
Conventions: the demonstrate control of the
extent to which the conventions with essentially
writing exhibits no errors, even with
conventional sophisticated language
spelling, punctuation,
paragraphing,
capitalization, and
grammar
Responses at this level:
convey an accurate and
complete understanding of
the topic, audience, and
purpose for the writing task
offer clear and explicit
analysis and explanation in
support of the topic
develop ideas clearly and
consistently, incorporating
and explaining specific
textual evidence from a
variety of sources
discriminate between
relevant and irrelevant
information and between
fact and opinion
effectively establish and
maintain consistent focus
on a clear thesis
exhibit a logical sequence
of claims, evidence, and
interpretations to support
the thesis and effectively
used transitions
make effective use of
transition words and
phrases
use language that is fluent
and original, with evident
awareness of audience and
purpose
incorporate varied
sentence patterns that reveal
an awareness of different
syntactic structures
demonstrate control of the
conventions, exhibiting
occasional errors only when
using sophisticated
language (e.g., punctuation
of complex sentences)
4 3 2 1
Responses at this level: Responses at this level: Responses at this level: Responses at this level:
convey an accurate convey a partly accurate convey a confused or provide no evidence
although somewhat basic understanding of the topic, largely inaccurate of understanding the
understanding of the topic, audience, and purpose of understanding of the topic, writing task or topic
audience, and purpose for the writing task audience, and purpose for make incoherent
the writing task offer limited analysis or the writing task explanations that do
offer partial analysis and superficial explanation that offer unclear analysis or not support the topic
explanation in support of only partially support the unwarranted explanations
the topic topic that fail to support the
topic
develop some ideas develop ideas briefly or attempt to offer some completely lack
more fully than others, partially, using some textual development of ideas, but development and do
using relevant textual evidence but without much textual evidence is vague, not include textual
evidence from a variety of elaboration or from limited repetitive, or unjustified evidence
sources sources contain irrelevant and/or contain irrelevant
attempt to discriminate may contain a mix of inaccurate information and/or inaccurate
between relevant and relevant and irrelevant and/or confuse the information and
irrelevant information and information and/or confuse difference between fact completely fail to
between fact and opinion the difference between fact and opinion distinguish fact from
and opinion opinion
establish and maintain establish but fail to establish a confused or fail to include a
focus on a clear thesis consistently maintain focus irrelevant thesis and fail to thesis or maintain
exhibit a logical on a basic thesis maintain focus focus
sequence of claims, exhibit a basic structure exhibit an attempt to complete lack of
evidence, and but lack the coherence of organize ideas into a organization and
interpretations but ideas consistent claims, evidence, beginning, middle, and coherence
within paragraphs may be and interpretations end, but lack coherence make no attempt to
inconsistently organized make an inconsistent make little attempt to use transition words or
make some attempt to attempt to use some basic use transition words and phrases
use basic transition words transition words or phrases phrases
and phrases
use appropriate rely on basic vocabulary, use language that is use language that is
language, with some with little awareness of imprecise or unsuitable for incoherent or
awareness of audience and audience or purpose the audience or purpose inappropriate
purpose reveal a limited awareness reveal a confused include a
make some attempt to of how to vary sentence understanding of how to preponderance of
include different sentence patterns and rely on a write in complete sentence fragments
patterns but with awkward limited range syntactic sentences and little or no and run-ons that
or uneven success structures ability to vary sentence significantly hinder
patterns comprehension
demonstrate partial demonstrate emerging demonstrate lack of illegible or
control, exhibiting control, exhibiting frequent control, exhibiting unrecognizable as
occasional errors that do errors that somewhat hinder frequent errors that make literate English
not hinder comprehension comprehension (e.g., comprehension difficult
(e.g., incorrect use of agreement of pronouns and (e.g., subject verb
homonyms) antecedents; spelling of agreement; use of slang)
basic words)
2/3/03