What should students know about
speculative/text- based writing prompts?
2009
l These tasks will present students with a briefly described situation to which they are asked to respond with a narrative. The given situation will provide students with information that may be used as a springboard for a student to write a story, actual or fictional. This text-based speculative prompt may be thought of as a variation of the speculative/picture prompt. Both speculative writing tasks require that students use their imagination to speculate about something.
l In responding to the situation presented, students will be asked to make decisions, solve a problem, and create original work.
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l Each student is given 2 blank planning pages, and 4 lined pages. Only the lined pages are scored. (Students may use as many of the lined pages as needed to respond to the prompt.)
Students are given 25 minutes to construct a narrative or story based on the given writing prompt, or some aspect of that prompt.
l During testing, the NJ ASK Writer’s Checklist is provided to encourage students to read, reread, revise, and edit their written work.
l For the purposes of scoring, all students’ writing is considered a first draft in the assessment writing process. During testing, students are not permitted to confer with others nor to refer to outside resources such as a dictionary, thesaurus, or classroom displays.
l The student’s written response will be scored using the NJ Registered Holistic Scoring Rubric (The 5 point rubric for grade 5, or the 6 point rubric for grades 6 through 8.)