National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy
Narrative Writing Task:
training for markers
Why we are here
•
•
To become familiar with the rubric for marking the
NAPLAN Writing task.
To apply the rubric by marking training scripts.
Schedule
Session 1
• review of the student task
• introduction to the marking guide
• explanation of criteria 1-4 and
marking 2 example scripts
Session 2
• explanation of criteria 6-10 and
marking 2 example scripts
• Prepare to mark qualification scripts
The task is to write a narrative
This is a demand writing task
Students must write a story, although they can
respond to the stimulus in a range of ways.
• They can tell a story that is:
• an imaginative story
• an adventure story
• a mystery story
• a horror story
• a romance
• a fantasy
• …
This means they have to know and be able to
craft those forms.
For example, they need to know that …
a mystery has:
•
•
•
•
•
•
a setting
characters
event/s — complication (cause
and effect; problem and solution)
clues
elements of suspense
resolution — at least to some
extent.
An adventure story has
• a setting in time and place
• characters — may not be well developed,
one dimensional
• event/s complication
which builds in a sustained way to a climax
(cause and effect; problem and solution)
• a strong focus on the action
• resolution — at least to some extent.
A horror story
• can take the overall form of an adventure,
a mystery, 1st person narration
• uses subject matter that is unusual or
abnormal in a normal situation or is very
normal in an abnormal context
• the emphasis is on the elements of
suspense
• at least one of characters is extreme with a
single element of that character’s personality
being relentlessly developed.
Writers need to take a narrator stance –
and hold it
• 1st person narrator stance
– uses “I”
– sees through the eyes of a story character.
• 3rd person narrator stance
– uses “they”
– takes the perspective of an unseen narrator
– has two main types:
• all-knowing
• knowing only what the characters know.
Organisation of the marking guide
The manual has
• the 10 criteria pages
• annotated samples
• a general glossary of grammatical terms
• a reference list of spelling.
Page format
Skill focus
Category
descriptor
Additional
information
Sample
scripts
Grades
Some pages also have extra notes about the skill focus.
Criteria maximum score points
Criterion
Marks
Audience
0-6
Text structure
0-4
Ideas
0-5
Character AND
setting
0-4
Vocabulary
0-5
Cohesion
0-4
Paragraphing
0-2
Sentence
structure
0-6
Punctuation
0-5
Spelling
0-6
Note the
weighting of the
criteria and mark
points on the
surface features.
Zero scores
Before beginning to mark it is important to note that a
zero score on any criterion should be applied with
caution.
Although for many of the criteria a script will only score
zero where it a drawing or a series of letters, this is not
the case for criterion 7, paragraphing.
Difficult to read and
very short scripts
To gain familiarity with the scoring patterns
for low level scripts, please read the first
4 exemplars and their annotations:
• Role play writer
• Dungaun
• The casel
• BMX.
Audience
Skill focus: The writer’s capacity to orient,
engage and affect the reader.
Score range: 0 – 6
In marking audience we are looking for the
students’ awareness of their audience.
• Have they responded to the task?
• How well?
• Have they selected subject matter relevant to the
task and of interest to their audience?
• Have they attempted to engage their audience?
E.g. select and deploy rhetorical devices that
– lead a reader through
– engage a reader’s interest or emotion
– directly appeal to a reader e.g. rhetorical
questions.
Understanding of audience
Self audience
Trusted audience (family and friends)
GROWTH
Known audience (teacher)
Distant audience (physically remote)
Distant audience (socially remote/powerful)
Knows and uses different reader
expectations
Engaging reader interest
— language choices
Literary (“narrative”) devices
Students acknowledge and engage readers when
they use language the way writers do. Even clichés
may be a step in the right direction.
•
•
•
•
Figurative language – a starry night
Hyperbole: My Dad is the world’s laziest.
Understatement: Death is a bit disruptive.
Idiom or jargon: “I could well of backed the
trifecta”, he said.
Activity
•
•
•
•
Read Magical park and St John’s orphanage.
Working in pairs, discuss these two scripts.
Mark the audience criterion
Refer to the manual – use the category
descriptions and additional information as well as
the annotated scripts to confirm your
understanding of the rubric and how it is applied.
• Discuss your reasons for making the decisions
you did.
Text structure
Skill focus: The organisation of narrative
(story) features including orientation,
complication and resolution.
Score range: 0 – 4
Text structure
• Orientation
• Complication
• Resolution
… into a complete narrative.
An orientation can focus the
reader on the:
•
•
•
•
situation
setting
action
characters.
A complication advances the plot.
It is more than a disappointment.
A narrative needs a plot
• Plots have different forms
–
–
–
–
–
dramatic plot
episodic plot
cumulative plot
parallel plot
circular plot
• Plots usually have an element of
tension.
Narrative plots are often driven by
conflict
• Struggle against nature – Children of the
Oregon trail; Little house …
• Struggle against another person usually the
antagonist – Redwall, Harry Potter
• Struggle against society – The Guardians;
Northern lights
• Struggle against fate – Holes
• An internal struggle, e.g. the two sides of one
character – Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Narrative devices
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
imagery
metaphor
figurative language
allusion
hyperbole
understatement
symbolism
Activity
•
•
•
•
Read Magical park and St John’s orphanage.
Working in pairs, discuss these two scripts.
Mark the text structure criterion.
Refer to the manual – use the category
descriptions and additional information as well as
the annotated scripts to confirm your
understanding.
• Discuss the reasons why you made the decision
you did.
Ideas
Skill focus: The creation, selection and crafting
of ideas for a narrative.
Score range: 0 – 5
What is an idea?
• In some scripts the ideas are the events
in the story.
• BMX (page 25) is a one-idea story with no
elaboration.
• Have the ideas been elaborated?
• At the higher score levels (4 or 5) theme is an
important consideration.
• It is not necessary (and often not desirable)
for a theme to be stated explicitly – the best
ones underpin the entire text.
Theme
Theme is the important idea, the meaning,
the significance behind the story.
“Theme is the melody, the motive, or the dominant
idea developed in the story. Children, like adults
prefer authors who trust readers to infer theme from
the characters, events and setting from story events
rather than preaching or explicitly stating the theme.”
(Calkins)
Theme … multiple themes
• The need to be loved
– give/receive unconditional love
• The need to belong
• The need to achieve
• The need for security
• The need to know
– the power of knowledge
• The need to survive
– resourcefulness
• The need to mature (with heroic qualities)
• Life and death
• Good over evil
• …
Activity
•
•
•
•
Read Magical park and St John’s orphanage.
Working in pairs, discuss these two scripts.
Mark the ideas criterion.
Refer to the manual – use the category
descriptions and additional information as well as
the annotated scripts to confirm your
understanding.
• Discuss the reasons why you made the decision
you did.
Character and Setting
Skill focus:
Character — the portrayal and development
of character
Setting — the development of a sense of
time and place.
Score range: 0 – 4
Students’ development of characterisation
GROWTH
• Generic characters — the boy, the girl;
also movie or book characters (1)
• Friend characters — those with the
names of the writer and his/her friends (1)
• Invented characters — begins about
Year 2 but common by about Year 4 (1)
• Characters through dialogue — bits of
character emerge (2)
• Characters through description (3)
• Characters through their actions and
reactions. (4)
• … (more advanced stages)
Graves, 1989, 1991, 1994; Jenkins, 1996
Telling vs. showing
If I have to tell you, I lose.
If on the other hand I can show you a dirtyhaired woman who compulsively gobbles
cake and candy then you have to draw the
conclusion that Annie is in the depressive
part of a manic-depressive cycle, I win. …
If, on the other hand, I turn her into a
cackling crone, she’s just another pop-up
bogey lady. In which case I lose big time
and so does the reader.
Stephen King 2000:190
Wolf
Gillian Cross
He came in the early morning, at about half past two. His feet
padded along the balcony, slinking silently past the closed
doors of the other flats. No one glimpsed his shadow
flickering across the curtain or noticed the uneven rhythm of
his steps.
But he woke Cassy. She lay in her bed under the window and
listened as the footsteps stopped outside. There were two
quick, light taps on the front door. Then a pause and then
two more taps, like a signal.
Cassy sat up slowly. She heard the door of the back room open
and Nan come hurrying out. Not running (nurses never run,
except for fire or haemorrhage), but crossing the tiny hall in
two quick strides.
The front door handle clicked, but no one spoke and no light
from the hall showed under Cassy’s door. He came in
quickly, in silence, in the dark, and the door closed behind
him a once.
She lay down again and closed her yes, wiping her mind clean and
willing the questions away. Mind your own business, Nan
always said, and you won’t get your nose caught in my mouse
trap.
No questions. No thinking at all. The blankness came easily, from
long practice, and she floated into a dreamless sleep.
When she woke up again it was morning. Nan was standing at the
foot of the bed, beside the chest of drawers. On top of the
chest, level with Nan’s face, was the big framed photograph of
Cassy’s father as a little boy. Both of them stood very straight,
shining clean, but not smiling. Mother and son.
Nan was staring straight at Cassy, but the boy’s eyes were gazing
into the distance, fixed on something beyond the picture. For a
second, floating up out of sleep, Cassy wondered what it was.
Then she saw the old brown suitcase in Nan’s right hand.
Activity
•
•
•
•
Read Magical park and St John’s orphanage.
Working in pairs, discuss these two scripts.
Mark the character and setting criterion.
Refer to the manual – use the category
descriptions and additional information as well as
the annotated scripts to confirm your
understanding.
• Discuss the reasons why you made the decision
you did.
Session 2
• explanation of criteria 6-10 and
marking 2 example scripts
• prepare to mark qualification scripts
Vocabulary
Skill focus: The range and precision of
language choices.
Score range: 0 - 5
Vocabulary
The best writing
• selects words with precision, for effect
• uses figurative language to give
— connotations of meaning,
— to develop the emotive qualities of the
text
• Uses vocabulary to increase the density
of ideas and thus “paint in the details” of
the story.
Cohesion
Skill focus: The control of multiple threads
and relationships across the whole text,
achieved by the use of referring words
(pronouns), substitutions, word associations
and text connectives.
Score range: 0 – 4
Cohesion
Cohesion can be either:
• grammatical
or
• lexical.
Cohesion
Grammatical cohesion
• pronoun referencing
• connectives
– time
– cause
– addition
– contrast
• use of repeated conjunctions to connect clause
– additive (and); contrastive (but ) & time (then)
– causal (so, because, consequently)
Cohesion
Grammatical cohesion
• pronoun referencing
– inside or outside the text
(as against undefined)
– backward or forward referencing use
• repetition of conjunctions to connect clauses
– additive (and); contrastive (but ) & time (then)
– causal ( so, because, consequently)
• use of connectives.
Pronouns should be redefined when
the reference chains
• cross each other
• get too long
• change in number, e.g. we = Tommy, Jim
and I and then Tommy leaves,
• cross the paragraph boundaries (often)
Connectives
Time
• Since then, after that, next, as soon as, next morning, by and
by
• At first, until then, earlier
• At the same time, meanwhile, without delay
Cause
• As a result, therefore, consequently
• Because of, so that, due to
• Otherwise, in that case, then
• As long as, granted that, considering how, now that
Addition
• Furthermore, moreover, similarly
• Indeed, actually, namely, that is
• For example, finally
• Therefore, in conclusion
Contrast
• But yet, on the other hand
• however
Cohesion
Lexical cohesion – linking of ideas
•
•
•
•
•
•
repetition
substitution (synonyms)
related words (collocation)
part to whole
class to sub-class
ellipsis
Matt bent over with laughter. ‘We did it, Jess,’ he cried out. We did it.’ He
ran over and hugged his sister in her ghost gown. ‘We scared the tripe out
of him.’
Jessica was more interested in getting rid of her robes. ‘Here, help me out
of this clobber,’ she said, trying to lift the folds over her head. ‘It’s like
being tangled up in a parachute.’
Matt helped her out of her garments and she started to fold them up. The
scarecrow spectre was still leaning against the rock nearby. Matt was too
busy enjoying the joke against Uncle Bert to begin dismantling it, but
Jessica was in a hurry.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I want to go home.’
‘Okay.’ They both turned quickly — and froze. Jessica gave a little cry.
At the same time she heard Matt draw his breath in a rasping gasp. The
skin on the napes of their neck prickled and their blood seemed to run as
cold as ice.
A shrouded figure was standing within thirty metres of them on the
Klontarf trail. It was quite motionless – a still white column, strangely
luminous, as though lit by a diffused inner light. It was an ethereal
presence — calm, mystic, unmoving — the embodiment of the world of
spirits.
Colin Thiele
Activity
•
•
•
•
Read Magical park and St John’s orphanage.
Working in pairs, discuss these two scripts.
Mark the vocabulary and cohesion criteria.
Refer to the manual – use the category
descriptions and additional information as well as
the annotated scripts to confirm your
understanding.
• Discuss the reasons why you made the decision
you did.
Paragraphs
Skill focus: The segmenting of text into
paragraphs that assists a reader to negotiate
the narrative.
Skills score: 0 – 2
Paragraphs are important to the
organisation and thus the readability of
the text.
I would argue that the paragraph, not the
sentence, is the basic unit
of writing — the place where coherence
begins and words stand a chance of
being more than mere words.
Stephen King (2000:129)
Paragraphs …
“… are almost as important for how
they look as what they do.”
In narrative …
paragraphs are about “the beat of the
narrative”… as the rhythm of the narrative
increases, paragraphs shorten.
In narrative, a paragraph can be a single
sentence long.
Reading like a writer — Look at the excerpt from Wolf in your handout.
Discuss how the author is using the paragraphs to craft the narrative.
Learning the author’s craft
When to start a new paragraph?
When a
•
new character enters the story
•
new event happens
•
new setting is described
•
new person is speaking
•
time moves on a lot – either forward or
back
•
when I want a small fact/action to have
impact
•
…
Credit for a paragraph break
• Indentation of a new line
• Space between the paragraph blocks
• Student annotations (NP, square brackets,
asterisks, etc.)
• Available space on the previous line left
unused and context shows a paragraph is
intended.
Sentence structure
Skill focus: The production of
grammatically correct, structurally sound
and meaningful sentences.
Score range: 0 – 6
Sentence structure
Note the duel focus on correctness and
the carriage of meaning.
In this criterion, we are looking for evidence
of control
Different sentences convey information in
different ways.
Sentence types are:
• questions
Power
• statements
Distance
• exclamatives
Affect
• imperatives.
Sentence structure includes
• the internal structure of the
clause
• subject verb agreement
• verb control, i.e. the correct form
and correct tense
• correct sequence particularly of
relative clauses
• modality.
Clause structure represents thinking.
It signals the:
• logical relations between ideas
• order of ideas
• relative importance or weighting of ideas.
Clause structure is a good indicator of
growth in students’ writing.
What kind of sentence is it?
I am taking an aerobics class.
I bent, I twisted, I gyrated and I jumped
up and down for half an hour …
By the time I got my leotard on, the
class was over.
A simple sentence
… is a single clause with a
• subject — Who
• verb (or verb group) —
does/says/thinks/feels … is/has
• object — what .
Theo loves a bone.
Simple sentences can be elaborated to tell
more.
Theo, my dog, loves a bone after a swim.
A compound sentence
… is a set of linked or coordinated clauses.
The clauses give information of equal
weighting. Only the sequence in the
sentence suggests the order of importance.
They are usually linked by words such as
and, or, but, and not only … but also.
In a compound sentence …
One clause may
• extend the other
– Jill played the trumpet and Joan played violin.
• elaborate an idea
– Each argument was fatal to the other: both
could not be true.
• report the actual words of a speaker
– “Mark on computer!” she shouted.
Remember the conversational “and”
Students who are yet to understand the
difference between oral and written language.
In these cases, the “and” is often used as a
full stop or a pause marker.
The conversational “and” is an indication that
students have not yet begun to master
subordination.
A complex sentence
A complex sentence has a main or principal
clause and a subordinate clause.
The clauses do not have equal status. The
logical relationship between the ideas is
signalled by the conjunction.
Adverbial clauses tell how, when, where or
why.
Complex sentences
Relative clauses (adjectival clauses) also expand
on a participant in another clause.
A relative clause can
• add information
– Bull terriers, which have a bad reputation, are
not suitable pets for children.
• define or restrict the participant
– The ones who arrived late hadn’t been invited.
• report the words or thoughts of a participant
– He thought that marking on a computer would
be great.
A quick way to tell the difference between a
compound and a complex sentence is to move the
clause around.
If it can be moved without changing the meaning then
the clause is a subordinate one and the sentence is
complex.
I went to school because I had to.
Because I had to I went to school.
I went swimming and then fishing.
And then fishing I went swimming.
“Reading in” punctuation
In some instances the sentence structure is correct
but the punctuation is incorrect or missing.
Tony and Jessie are not my friends they tell lies.
This computer is far too difficult to use, it came
without a manual.
These examples are correct sentences with
incorrect punctuation.
“Reading in” punctuation
Where a student uses repeated “then” to string the
sentences together they can usually be separated:
Then we went to get on the boat, then we rowed to
the island then we got out then we had lunch.
Although the sentences are correct this type of
writing does not show great control. The text would
not score above a 1 if this were the only sentence
type in evidence.
“Reading in” punctuation
Where a student uses repeated conversational “and”
or “and then” to string the sentences together, they
usually cannot be separated:
We went to the boat and then we got into the boat
and we rowed to the island and then we had lunch
and we went home.
Activity
• Read Magical park and St John’s orphanage.
• Working in pairs, discuss these two scripts.
• Mark the paragraphing and sentence structure
criteria.
• Refer to the manual – use the category
descriptions and additional information as well as
the annotated scripts to confirm your
understanding.
• Discuss the reasons why you made the decision
you did.
Punctuation
Skill focus: The use of correct and
appropriate punctuation to aid reading of
the text.
Score range: 0 – 5
Punctuation is about meaning
Punctuation marks out the connected and
embedded meanings in a text, tracing how an
argument or narrative is progressing —
indicating where a particular train of thought
comes to an end, where there has been
a digression and where an incomplete thread
is picked up again.
Smith, F. (1982:156) Writing and the Writer
Punctuation
• Marks out the semantic boundaries
• Paces the reader
• Mark points 1-3 are about sentence
boundary punctuation.
• Level 4 is about handling other
punctuation as well as the correct
sentence punctuation.
• Level 5 — all applicable punctuation and
used to pace a reader.
Punctuation
A note on scores 2 and 3
There is a range of performance possible in
score 3 but sentence boundary punctuation
needs to be mostly under control.
If a script shows control of some punctuation
other than sentence punctuation but the
sentence punctuation is missing or incorrect
it is possible to score an “on balance” 2.
(See Woodern box page 33.)
Two final points
• Contraction apostrophes are marked here
and not in spelling.
• The qualitative shift is between 3 and 4.
Spelling
Skill focus: The accuracy of spelling and
the difficulty of (spelling) the words used.
Score range: 0–6
Spelling is described as
•
•
•
•
simple
common
difficult
challenging.
What are simple words?
To spell
Simple words are those single-syllable words where
sounds map directly onto the letters, e.g:
• cvc words — bad, fit, not
• consonant blends — drop, clap, grass
• consonant digraphs — shop, thin
• double final consonants — will, less
• high-frequency long vowel words — name,
park, good, school, feet
What are common words?
To spell
Single syllable words with
• trigraphs — square, stretch, spring
• common long vowels — fame, sail, use
• frequently used words with less common long vowels
patterns — they
• frequently used multi-letter short vowel — could, heavy
• frequently used words with silent letters — know,
wrong, lamb
• suffixes added to a base word
–
–
–
–
without change — sadly, cars, jumped
with a drop e — having
double letter — spitting, running
change y to I — flies, heavier
What are common words?
To spell
And
• frequently used homophones — there/their,
here/hear, break/brake.
Multi-syllabic words which
• have even stress patterns — litter, plastic
• are compound words — downstairs
• have suffixes added without a change — happening
What are difficult words?
To spell
Words with
• uneven stress patterns — desolate, chocolate
• less frequent vowel patterns — drought
• soft g & c — hygiene
• predictable patterns for adding endings —
confident/confidence
• suffixes such as able/ible, tion/sion (and variants)
ture, ant/ent, ful
What are difficult words?
To spell
• difficult homophones — practice/practise
• words with visually similar patterns —
dessert/desert, complaint/compliant
What are challenging words?
To spell
Words with
• unusual consonant patterns — guarantee,
scintillate, ubiquitous
• longer words with unstressed syllables —
responsibilities, environment
• foreign words — ricochet,
• suffixes added to a word ending in -ce, -ge —
changeable, noticeable
What are challenging words?
To spell
• Vowel alternation patterns (sounded to schwa)
– inspire/inspiration
• Consonant alternation patterns (where the base
words are likely to be unknown)
– Vicious (vice)
• Absorbed prefixes
– colleague, correlate, (com)
– innumerable, illogical (in=not)
• Syllable juncture — colossal, correspond
Activity
•
•
•
•
Read Magical park and St John’s orphanage.
Working in pairs, discuss these two scripts.
Mark the punctuation and spelling criteria.
Refer to the manual – use the category
descriptions and additional information as well as
the annotated scripts to confirm your
understanding.
• Discuss the reasons why you made the decision
you did.