Text-Based Writing Prompts: Administration and Scoring Guidelines

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1 Text-Based Writing Prompts: Administration and Scoring Guidelines Teacher Directions: Students will read a stimulus about a single topic. A stimulus consists of several texts written on a single topic. The stimulus may include informational or literary fiction or nonfiction texts and can cover a wide array of topics. After reading the stimulus, the students will respond to a writing prompt in which they will provide information on a topic, develop a narrative, or take a stance to support an opinion or argument. Students will be required to synthesize information from the text sets and must cite specific evidence from the texts to support their ideas. Students informative/explanatory responses should demonstrate a developed and supported controlling idea. Students opinion/argumentative responses should support an opinion/argument using ideas presented in the stimulus. Students will have 120 minutes to read the passages, and plan, write, revise and edit their essay. Students should read the prompt first. They should be encouraged to highlight, underline, and take notes to support the planning process. Scoring: The attached text-based rubric should be used to score student responses. While the total possible points on the rubric is ten, it is recommended that three individual scores be given one score for each of the three domains on the rubric. This will allow the teacher to determine specific areas of need within individual student responses, thus allowing for differentiation in the writing instruction that follows these formative writing tasks. The three domains are: Purpose, Focus, Organization (PFO), Evidence and Elaboration (EE), and Conventions of Standard English (CSE). Teachers should score holistically within each domain PFO (4-points), EE (4-points), and CSE (2-points). Each level of scoring within a domain is based on the overarching statement for the score found in the rubric. For example, on the grades 6-11 rubric for argumentation, the overarching statement for a score of 4 in the Purpose, Focus, Organization domain is, The response is fully sustained and consistently focused within the purpose, audience, and task; and it has a clear and effective organizational structure creating coherence and completeness. The bulleted points that follow the statement must be considered as factors in the scoring, but should not be utilized as a checklist. Most, but not all, of the bulleted points will be evident in the student writing for a score at a specific level. Teachers should keep in mind that a score of 3 on the rubric for a domain signals student proficiency in the addressed writing standard with a score of 4 representing mastery. In the CSE domain, a score of two represents student proficiency in the standard.

2 Eighth Grade: Argumentative Prompt Set 2 Write an argumentative essay justifying whether or not electronic cigarettes should be regulated. Support your claim using evidence from the texts. Manage your time carefully so that you can: Read the passages Plan your essay Write your essay Revise and edit your essay Be sure to: Include a claim Address counterclaims Use evidence from multiple sources Avoid overly relying on one source Your written response should be in the form of a multi-paragraph essay. Remember to spend time reading, planning, writing, revising, and editing.

3 How Should E-Cigarettes Be Regulated? Public health excitement around e-cigarettes rests on their potential to significantly reduce harm compared to cigarettes. If the evidence does eventually show net benefits at the population level i.e., that cigarette smokers will switch completely to e-cigs, that they do not lead to youth uptake of cigarettes and that any harm (both from using and from being exposed to someone using) is negligible then we can consider marketing these products aggressively. Until then, e-cigs should be subject to the same marketing and sales restrictions as cigarettes. In addition, use of e-cigs should be prohibited in indoor and outdoor public places where cigarettes are prohibited, and they should not be sold to minors unless prescribed by a health care provider. Joanna Cohen, PhD, MHSc, is director of the Bloomberg School s Institute for Global Tobacco Control and the Bloomberg Associate Professor of Disease Prevention. The overwhelming preventable deaths come not from nicotine but from smoking tobacco, primarily cigarettes. The goal of regulation is harm minimization at individual and population levels: use e-cigs to speed the obsolescence of lethal combustibles, while keeping them away from youth. Regulations must minimize individual harms while ensuring e-cigs are not sold or marketed to anyone under 18. Product standards can ensure quality controls, safe handling and accurate labeling, and child-resistant packaging. Comprehensive nicotine regulation is required to maximize benefits: fast track approval of use for harm reduction and smoking cessation to replace lethal cigarettes. Post-market surveillance should aggressively monitor unintended consequences and drive public education/ enforcement to counteract misleading beliefs and behaviors that slow rather than accelerate e-cigs beneficial impact. David B. Abrams, PhD, is executive director of the Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies and a professor in Health, Behavior and Society. E-cigarettes should be subject to the same basic requirements as cigarettes and other tobacco products. For example, e-cig manufacturers should be required to register with the FDA, provide ingredient information and obtain approval for new products. The FDA should also establish product standards, quality controls for manufacturing, contaminant limits and labeling requirements. The American Heart Association has also asked the FDA to require childproof packaging, restrict marketing to children, prohibit sales to youth and ban the use of candy and fruit flavors.

4 Elliott Antman, MD, is president of the American Heart Association and a Harvard Medical School professor. Regulating in the absence of solid evidence is tough. E-cigarette regulation should not be undertaken without strengthening all aspects of cigarette regulations starting with taxes and better controls on youth access. E-cig regulations should focus on product safety, minimizing youth access and control of candy flavors. They should be framed to encourage harm reduction switching from cigarettes to e-cigs reduces to almost zero the harm caused by tobacco and be linked to strategic research evaluating impact. We need research that looks at the impact of e-cigs on the use of tobacco products, as well as on the impact of e-cig use on health outcomes. Derek Yach, MPH 85, MBChB, is senior vice president of the Vitality Group. E-cigarettes present great potential for the reduction, and ultimate elimination, of cigarette smoking. The key to their success will be in how they are regulated. Federal regulation is necessary to prevent e-cigarettes from becoming gateway tools into tobacco use, particularly for adolescents, and to prevent dual use of e-cigarettes and tobacco cigarettes. E-cigs should be regulated as novel nicotine delivery systems. While most of these regulations would align with current tobacco guidelines for packaging, labeling, sales, and advertisement, new regulations specific to e-cigs, such as prohibiting the sale of nicotine flavors targeted to children, are necessary too.

5 PRO/CON: Are federal regulations needed for e-cigarettes? PRO: Treat e-cigs just like tobacco products In 2014, the Oxford English Dictionary s word of the year was vape. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should take a hint from the dictionary. It should write its own definition of e-cigarettes a definition that will treat them as a tobacco product. Congress created the FDA in It was a time of concern over the quality and purity of America s food and drug supply, which was awash in toxic dyes and preservatives. The agency was shaped by the outrageous claims of fake miracle cures known as "snake oil." The agency was created to help people know whether a product is safe, reliable and healthy. In short, the FDA was made to regulate products just like e-cigarettes. Unproven Health Claims E-cigarettes have unproven health claims. Right now, more than 16 million children can legally buy e-cigarettes and give themselves as much nicotine as they want and nicotine is not harmless. Accidentally drinking liquid nicotine has caused a huge increase in the number of cases reported to local poison control centers including the death of a toddler in upstate New York two months ago. And it is a market that is booming. Last year, analysts at Wells Fargo bank estimated the overall value of the e-cigarette industry at $2.5 billion. They predict it will grow to $10 billion annually by The product's growth is partly due to advertising. Yet, the other part of that growth is the growth in the number of high school students using them. The variety of e-cig flavors, including cotton candy, gummy bear and root beer float, attract young people. E-cigarettes should be regulated, not banned. The FDA is the only agency that can do that. The FDA should prohibit sales and advertising to kids and make sure that health claims made by e-cig companies are true. It should also require companies to list the ingredients in e-cig juice. Juice sounds harmless, but it's misleading. It is, in fact, a flavored nicotine mixture. The liquid nicotine is heated through a battery-powered cylinder, which can look like a cigarette, a pen or a kazoo.

6 Inhaling Flavored Vapors The devices vaporize a flavored nicotine solution that users then inhale and exhale. Users inhale this flavored vapor and not burning tobacco. Because burning tobacco releases toxins like tar, this means e-cigs are safer compared to cigarettes. But, then again, cigarettes kill 6 million people per year. In the words of historian Robert Proctor, they are the deadliest invention in human history. And herein lies the possible merit of the e-cigarette: it could be a powerful tool for saving millions of lives if smokers switched from puffing to vaping to, ideally, nothing. The problem is that the safety and health claims of e-cigarettes have not been proven. Online, many folks claim e-cigs have helped them kick the habit. Yet these are just anecdotes. In the words of Mitch Zeller, head of the FDA s Tobacco Products Division, FDA can t make regulatory policy on the basis of anecdotal evidence. Initial evidence from a major new study should cause regulators to stop and think. The early findings from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health indicate high levels of dual use of tobacco products, meaning that smokers frequently use both e-cigarettes and regular cigarettes. These findings agree with other studies. They have likewise found that rather than helping people quit smoking, e-cigs may actually make it harder for smokers to quit. Warning Labels Needed Nevertheless, e-cigarettes are frequently advertised as if they've been proven to be healthy. Researchers at the University of California-San Francisco found that 95 percent of e-cig websites either made outright claims that they had health benefits, or hinted there were some. Sixty-four percent made claims directly related to helping users quit smoking. This is false advertising. Nicotine is addictive and it is a poison. The FDA should make both of these facts clear by requiring warning labels on e-cigarette devices and bottles of e-juices. Skin contact with even small quantities of liquid nicotine can cause dizziness, vomiting and seizures. Ingestion can be deadly. A world in which a dangerous product is marketed and sold as a healthy one is exactly what the FDA exists to prevent. E-cigarettes are not snake oil. But gummy bear, cotton candy and sour apple shouldn t make them go down any easier. ABOUT THE WRITER: Sarah Milov is an assistant professor of history at the University of Virginia. She currently is writing a book about tobacco in the 20th century. Readers may write her at 435 Nau Hall South Lawn, Charlottesville, VA

7 This essay is available to Tribune News Service subscribers. Tribune did not subsidize the writing of this column; the opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of Tribune or Newsela. CON: Vaping may help smokers kick the tobacco habit In 1964, the Surgeon General s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health released its very first report on tobacco smoking. It looked at scientific evidence from more than 7,000 articles related to smoking and disease. Based on those studies, the report cited tobacco smoking as a major cause of lung and throat cancer and chronic bronchitis. The report launched a war on smoking. It soon required health warnings on cigarette packages and bans on cigarette commercials on radio and television. In recent years, it has led to bans on smoking in certain areas, like restaurants and other public places. Over this half-century of cigarette regulation, two facts have been public knowledge: 1) smoking tobacco kills people; 2) once a person is addicted to smoking cigarettes, or to the nicotine one ingests by smoking cigarettes, it is very hard for a person to quit. Switching From Smoking Then an invention came along e-cigarettes. They have nicotine just like a tobacco cigarette, but without any apparent link to cancer or lung disease. Many people cheered the new invention. Finally there was a product that could help those who were addicted and for whom the available anti-smoking aids had not been of sufficient help. Lives could be saved. People could replace their tobacco cigarettes with e-cigarettes and switch out smoke and carcinogens with water vapor. And that horrible smell would be replaced with no smell at all or the light scent of a flavor like mint or strawberry. One would expect the response of the public health community to be a near-universal hurrah. In some parts of the community, people have been happy. Addicted To Regulation? But some people appear to be addicted to regulation, and not to public health. For them, e- cigarettes provide an unwelcome challenge. How can they want to ban the use of a product that saves lives? For many of these regulators, they are worried about what ifs. What if vaping turns out to be harmful? What if people who vape decide to start smoking?

8 These what ifs are quite unlikely. However, it is on the basis of them that some people support bans. Some want bans on the sale of e-cigarettes, or grossly high taxes on e-cigarettes to discourage the use of e-cigs. Some even want outright bans on the use of e-cigarettes in public. But such policies mean nicotine addicts will be less likely to use e-cigarettes. Instead, they may be more likely to keep smoking tobacco. The obvious and predictable result is relatively more tobacco smoking and thus, more illness and death. Don't Treat E-Cigs Like Cigarettes The director of the Food and Drug Administration s Center for Tobacco Products, Mitch Zeller, made the key point clear: People are smoking for the nicotine, but dying from the tar. He says e-cigarette regulation should take into account that different nicotine products "pose different levels of risk to the individual, and regulate accordingly. Which means America should not treat e-cigarettes and vaping just like tobacco smoking and smoking. Smoking is clearly far more dangerous than vaping. In fact, vaping can cause people to voluntarily stop smoking. Because of that, a carefully crafted regulatory policy that steers Americans from smoking toward vaping as a replacement provides an extraordinary public health opportunity. Zeller makes a lot of sense. By contrast, there are the regulation fanatics. These people are the enemy of public health. Smoking kills. Vaping is a safer alternative, and our nation s regulatory policy will save lives if it reflects this fact.

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10 FINAL English Language Arts Text-based Writing Rubrics Grades 6 11: Argumentation UPDATED OCTOBER 2014

11 FINAL ELA Text-based Writing Rubrics, Grades 6 11: Argumentation Florida Standards Assessments Score Purpose, Focus, and Organization (4-point Rubric) 4 The response is fully sustained and consistently focused within the purpose, audience, and task; and it has a clear claim and effective organizational structure creating coherence and completeness. The response includes most of the following: Strongly maintained claim with little or no loosely related material Clearly addressed alternate or opposing claims* Skillful use of a variety of transitional strategies to clarify the relationships between and among ideas Logical progression of ideas from beginning to end with a satisfying introduction and conclusion Appropriate style and tone established and maintained 3 The response is adequately sustained and generally focused within the purpose, audience, and task; and it has a clear claim and evident organizational structure with a sense of completeness. The response includes most of the following: Maintained claim, though some loosely related material may be present Alternate or opposing claims included but may not be completely addressed* Adequate use of a variety of transitional strategies to clarify the relationships between and among ideas Adequate progression of ideas from beginning to end with a sufficient introduction and conclusion Appropriate style and tone established Grades 6 11 Argumentation Text-based Writing Rubric (Score points within each domain include most of the characteristics below.) Evidence and Elaboration (4-point Rubric) The response provides thorough, convincing, and credible support, citing evidence for the writer s claim that includes the effective use of sources, facts, and details. The response includes most of the following: Smoothly integrated, thorough, and relevant evidence, including precise references to sources Effective use of a variety of elaborative techniques to support the claim, demonstrating an understanding of the topic and text Clear and effective expression of ideas, using precise language Academic and domain-specific vocabulary clearly appropriate for the audience and purpose Varied sentence structure, demonstrating language facility The response provides adequate support, citing evidence for the writer s claim that includes the use of sources, facts, and details. The response includes most of the following: Generally integrated and relevant evidence from sources, though references may be general or imprecise Adequate use of some elaborative techniques Adequate expression of ideas, employing a mix of precise and general language Domain-specific vocabulary generally appropriate for the audience and purpose Some variation in sentence structure Conventions of Standard English (2-point Rubric begins at score point 2) Continued on the following page 1 UPDATED OCTOBER 2014

12 FINAL ELA Text-based Writing Rubrics, Grades 6 11: Argumentation Florida Standards Assessments Score Purpose, Focus, and Organization (4-point Rubric) Evidence and Elaboration (4-point Rubric) Conventions of Standard English (2-point Rubric) 2 The response is somewhat sustained within the purpose, audience, and task but may include loosely related or extraneous material; and it may have a claim with an inconsistent organizational structure. The response may include the following: Focused claim but insufficiently sustained or unclear Insufficiently addressed alternate or opposing claims* Inconsistent use of transitional strategies with little variety Uneven progression of ideas from beginning to end with an inadequate introduction or conclusion 1 The response is related to the topic but may demonstrate little or no awareness of the purpose, audience, and task; and it may have no discernible claim and little or no discernible organizational structure. The response may include the following: Absent, confusing, or ambiguous claim Missing alternate or opposing claims* Few or no transitional strategies Frequent extraneous ideas that impede understanding Too brief to demonstrate knowledge of focus or organization The response provides uneven, cursory support/evidence for the writer s claim that includes partial use of sources, facts, and details. The response may include the following: Weakly integrated evidence from sources; erratic or irrelevant references or citations Repetitive or ineffective use of elaborative techniques Imprecise or simplistic expression of ideas Some use of inappropriate domain-specific vocabulary Most sentences limited to simple constructions The response provides minimal support/evidence for the writer s claim, including little if any use of sources, facts, and details. The response may include the following: Minimal, absent, erroneous, or irrelevant evidence or citations from the source material Expression of ideas that is vague, unclear, or confusing Limited and often inappropriate language or domain-specific vocabulary Sentences limited to simple constructions The response demonstrates an adequate command of basic conventions. The response may include the following: Some minor errors in usage but no patterns of errors Adequate use of punctuation, capitalization, sentence formation, and spelling The response demonstrates a partial command of basic conventions. The response may include the following: Various errors in usage Inconsistent use of correct punctuation, capitalization, sentence formation, and spelling 0 The response demonstrates a lack of command of conventions, with frequent and severe errors often obscuring meaning. *Not applicable at grade 6 2 UPDATED OCTOBER 2014