Grade 8 Level 4 Writing Sample

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Global warming has become a serious threat to our planet. Explain what we can do as citizens to reduce the effects of global warming. You may want to consider factors, such as:

  • recycling
  • the impact of fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal)
  • the impact of consumerism (buying things).
Student Example

Student writing sample:

Global warming is a serious threat to Earth, causing many harmful effect on the environment and the ozone layer (which protect Earth from harmful sun ray's).  The first reason for global warming is deforestation.  Many trees get cut.  They clean the air  This leads to global warming.  To reduce the effect of global warming people that cut trees should replant new trees instead to maintain balance.  The second reason for global warming is garbages. Too much packages around things we buy and too many plastic bags cause global warming.  We must reduce the things we buys, recycle the garbage we make and not use so much things.  The last reason for global warming is fossil fuels.  Fossil fuels are burned for energies.  If we did not burn the fossil fuels we will not have the global warming.  Smoke from factories, industries and mainly nuclear plants cause global warming is not from one country but countries all over the world.  Smoke needs to stop and that means no more fossil fuels.  We need to make more fuel-efficient vehicles and find other ways to make power.  If we use everything the proper way, we can reduce global warming and the Earth will be saved.

Selects from a greater range of utility words (air, country, world, smoke, sun ray’s [sun rays]), descriptive words (harmful, new, plastic, more, other, global), subject‑specific words (ozone layer, deforestation, fossil fuels, industries, fuel-efficient), academic words (effect, balance, cause) and words with multiple meanings with increased understanding of curricular concepts.

Level 3: Uses regular plurals (trees, things, fuels, countries, vehicles), possessive pronouns (no evidence), prepositional phrases (all over the ...), regular verbs in continuous (causing, warming) and simple past tenses (burned), irregular verbs in continuous (no evidence) and simple past tenses (did) with more control of agreement and tense. (Writes in present tense using a variety of verbs: protect, get, clean, reduce, cut, maintain, buy, make, find)
Approaching Level 4: Uses negatives, irregular plurals, object pronouns, prepositions, regular and irregular verbs in past and future continuous tenses with occasional errors.

Writes connected complex sentences and cohesive, well-developed text with supporting detail (If we use everything the proper way, we can reduce global warming and Earth will be saved.).

Uses circumlocution (We must reduce the things we buy, recycle the garbage we make and not use so much things = We need to limit consumerism) and word substitution (energies = energy) to make better word choices in writing.

Produces expository and narrative texts with knowledge of culturally appropriate forms and style. In response to prompt (Writes what citizens can do to reduce the effects of global warming: we need to …).

Connects ideas in a three-paragraph composition using transition words (The first reason, The second reason, The last reason) and subordinate conjunctions (which, cause, instead).

Level 3: Edits for apostrophes, quotation marks, tenses (leads, replant, burn, needs) and common irregularly spelled words (serious, nuclear, fuels).
Approaching Level 4: Edits and revises texts for capitalization of proper nouns, apostrophes, quotation marks, hyphens, dashes, commas, regular and irregular spelling, spelling of homophones and homonyms, subject–verb agreement, appropriate word choice and addition of supporting details.

Use the checkboxes below to display the corresponding benchmark text.

Benchmark Ratings

 
 4
 
 3
 
 4
 
 4
 
 4
 
 4
 
 3
Overall
Benchmark Level:
4

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