In the Argument Writing strand of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), “evidence” is not mentioned until grade six. However, students will be assessed using the Smarter Balanced Opinion Writing Rubric (Grades 3-5), which includes “Elaboration of Evidence” as a component.
What appears to be a disconnect between the Common Core Standards and the Smarter Balanced assessment rubric, may not really be one. According to Oregon Department of Education’s ELA assessment specialist Ken Hermens:
“The grade 3-5 Opinion Writing Rubric was designed to measure student performance on a performance task that includes writing and research components. Students will be provided with resource materials in order to develop their “opinion” essay and part of the evaluation will be how effectively they tapped into the resources to support their opinion. While the Common Core Standards in the area of writing (3.W.1, 4.W.1, etc.) address skills related to writing opinion pieces but do not specify the use of resources, if you look at the “Research to Build and Present Knowledge” section under the Writing Standards (3.W.7-8, 4.W.7-9, etc.), you see that they do actually talk about skills such as “Conduct short research projects that build knowledge through investigation of different aspects of a topic” and “gather information from print and digital sources.” Even at these lower grades, then, there is an early emphasis on the investigation and use of resources in the CCSS.
My best guess to answer your question is that the element of evidence is introduced early because the Research claim (Claim #4 in the ELA tests) is being measured as well as the Writing claim (Claim #2). Additionally, setting this expectation at the early grades should help students be more successful at later grades where the use of source material becomes more sophisticated and critical.”
So, there you have it. It’s my hope that the “evidence” connection will be better communicated to teachers than is currently contained in the documents.
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