Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium: Practice Test Scoring Guide Grade 6 Performance Task Published August 26, 2013 Prepared by the American Institutes for Research Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, 2013 Descriptions of the operation of the Test Delivery System, Test Information Distribution Engine, and related systems are property of the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and are used with permission of AIR.
Robots Narrative Performance Task Task: You have joined a creative writing club that meets at the school library once a week. The current assignment is to write a science fiction story for the group about any subject that interests you. For your story, you must include information from research that you have done. To prepare for your story, you have decided to research the topic of robots. Below are four sources you have uncovered in your research (two essays, an article, and an image). After you have reviewed these sources, you will answer some questions about them. Briefly scan the sources and the three questions that follow. Then, go back and review the sources carefully to gain the information you will need to answer the questions and write a story. In Part 2, you will write a story on a topic related to the sources. Directions for Beginning: You will now examine several sources. You can re-examine any of the sources as often as you like. Research Questions: After examining the research sources, use the remaining time in Part 1 to answer three questions about them. Your answers to these questions will be scored. Also, your answers will help you think about the research sources you have read and viewed, which should help you write your story. You may click on the appropriate buttons to refer to the sources when you think it would be helpful. You may also refer to your notes. Answer the questions in the spaces provided below them. Part 1 Sources for Performance Task: Source #1 This article about the kinds of jobs performed by robots is based on information in the following sources: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/rescue-robot-just-made-minedisasters-121251 http://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/03/us/robot-completes-volcano-exploration.html http://www.ri.cmu.edu/research_project_detail.html?project_id=163&menu_id=261 http://www.umm.edu/news/releases/robot.htm http://www.economist.com/node/15048711
Meet the Robots by Erin Bregman If you think of robots as a thing of the future, think again. Robots do many jobs today. They work in mines and on farms. They help doctors and save lives. They even explore volcanoes. Here are some robots that are hard at work. Gemini-Scout Gemini-Scout is a remote-controlled robot that does search-and-rescue work in mines under the ground. The robot is less than two feet tall and has wheels. It can go up and down stairs and make tight turns, and it can even roll through water. The robot is small, but it is strong. Gemini- Scout carries food, water, and other supplies. It can even drag hurt people to safety. Wherever it goes, Gemini-Scout collects information. For example, it tests the air for gases and then tells miners when the air is safe. The robot also has a thermal camera to help it find miners. A thermal camera uses heat sensors to find living things. When the robot finds the trapped miners, the miners can use its two-way radio to talk with the rescue team. This robot was built to be easy to use. Its remote control is the same one that is used for some video games. If you ve ever played a video game, you may know how to use Gemini-Scout. Dante 2 Dante 2 is a robot with an interesting job it climbs into volcanoes to gather information for scientists. Like a spider, this robot has eight legs. This helps it climb the steep walls of the volcano. It is also built to survive very high heat. When a volcano is too dangerous for scientists to enter, Dante goes instead. Dante 2 looks for vents, or holes, in the crater. Then the robot collects information about the gases that come out of the vents. In the past, scientists could not learn as much about volcanoes, but Dante 2 is changing that. Now scientists can study a volcano up close while they remain safe in their laboratories. Mr. Gower Mr. Gower is a robot that works in hospitals, helping doctors and nurses bring medicine to patients. Mr. Gower looks like a small cabinet on wheels. The body of the robot is a stack of locked drawers that store medicine. Nurses and doctors can unlock the drawers when the medicine is needed. Mr. Gower can go anywhere in the hospital. It can ride elevators, steer through hallways, and move around things that get in the way. The robot is so strong that it can pull 500 pounds. Mr. Gower runs on batteries. After charging for two hours, the robot can deliver medicine for twelve hours without stopping.
Not only does it work long days, but Mr. Gower can talk. It has been programmed to say hundreds of phrases. For example, it can say, Calling elevator or Your delivery is here. Mr. Gower does work that doctors, pharmacists, and nurses used to do. This allows them to focus on other important tasks. Agribots An agribot is a robot that picks fruit. It might pick berries, oranges, grapes, or apples. Agribots are not yet widely used, but farmers are very interested in what these robots can do. Because picking a strawberry is different than picking an apple, agribots come in all shapes and sizes. Some have giant arms that are towed behind trucks. Others are able to move around on their own. In Japan, there is a strawberry-picking robot that can sense the color of the berries. This helps the robot know when each berry is ripe. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), scientists are working to grow cherry tomatoes with no human help at all! They have created a greenhouse full of plants that are cared for by small agribots. The agribots are like robot farmers. Every plant has sensors that tell the robots what the plant needs. If a plant is too dry, a robot will water it. When a robot senses that a tomato is ripe, it uses a mechanical arm to pick the tomato. Agribots may seem unusual now, but one day they may be common on farms. Source #2 Here is a photograph that shows the Dante II robot scaling a hillside on a field test before being sent into Mount Spurr, an active volcano in Alaska. http://www.algor.com/news_pub/cust_app/dante/images/dante2.jpg
Source #3 This article about interacting with robots is based on information in the following sources: http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/04/robots-at-work-and-play/100052/#img06 http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/current/2012-01-26/latest-news/robotic-hockeyteams-faceoff-penn-engineering http://www.gazettetimes.com/news/local/article_be8aab10-90dd-11e0-9473- 001cc4c002e0.html http://www.ipetcompanion.com/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20020139-1.html http://techcrunch.com/tag/hrp-4c/ http://io9.com/5090047/10-robotic-pets-that-deserve-to-live-in-the-white-house http://www.ubergizmo.com/2012/03/smart-fur-robo-bunny Robots that Play Well With Others by Kascha Semonovitch About fifty years ago, the author Isaac Asimov wrote a story called I, Robot. The story is set in the future, when robots take care of children. The main character loves her robot babysitter, Robbie. Unlike the child s parents, Robbie always has time to play. Robbie and the child have adventures together. Robbie is an endless source of fun! When the story was written, it was a fantasy. Now it is close to coming true, since today, robots can do all kinds of work. They assemble electronic gadgets, guide trains on tracks, and sort trash. Today s robots can play as well as work robots sing, dance, and even play music. A Japanese robot can play the piano with its two mechanical hands. Another robot, HRP-4c, can even dance and sing. Many playful robots are made to copy animals, too. Some robots play the way animals play while other robots play with animals. For example, moviemakers have designed huge robotic apes and dinosaurs to be in movies. But these kinds of robots aren t made only for movies. Robot animals can live with you. You can buy a lifelike pet, such as a dog, a seal, or even a dinosaur. These robot pets have a lot in common with real pets. They want your attention and you can teach them tricks. There is even a new version of a robot pet that has fur so you can pet your robot just like you pet your dog or cat. There is one difference, though you don t need to take them outside or feed them! Other robots help people play with live animals. One company, I-Pet Companion, has made a robot that lets people play with kittens, but from a distance. When you log on to the Internet, you can control the robot from far away. The robot is put in a room full of kittens. It drags a piece of string for the kittens to chase. When it s your turn, you can control the robot to pull the string this way or that way. The kittens jump after the string as you push the controls.
Some robots even play all by themselves. College students in Oregon have created robots that can play hockey or shuffleboard on their own. All year, the students work hard to design the robots. The robots play the game without any instructions from the students. The robots grab the puck, turn, twist and compete to score. In the final test, the robots must push the puck to the goal without being told what to do. There may never be a robot like Robbie since I, Robot was a made-up story. Still, today s robots can offer hours of fun. Source #4 Here is an article on self-driving cars, from NPR.com, February 17, 2012. http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/02/17/147006012/when-the-car-isthe-driver When the Car Is the Driver by Steve Henn This week the state of Nevada finalized new rules that will make it possible for robotic selfdriving cars to receive their own special driving permits. It's not quite driver's licenses for robots but it's close. The other day I went for a spin in a robotic car. This car has an $80,000 cone-shaped laser mounted on its roof. There are radars on the front, back and sides. Detailed maps help it navigate. Do people notice it's a self-driving car and gawk? "We get a lot of thumbs up," says Anthony Levandowski, one of the leaders of Google's selfdriving car project. "People drive by and then they wave. I wish they would keep their eyes on the road." Levandowski is in the passenger seat with a laptop showing him what the car can see. Chris Urmson is behind the wheel. But his hands are in his lap and the steering wheel is gently turning back and forth, tracing the contours of California's busy Highway 85. "And it can adjust the speed. If there is a particularly tight corner, it will slow down for that," Urmson says. "It adjusts speed to stay out of blind spots of other vehicles. It tries to match speed with traffic." Urmson has been working on this technology for close to a decade. His first car managed to travel just 11 miles on a dusty road. Google's vehicle is a giant leap forward.
"When we got this on the freeway and it was doing 70 miles an hour and just smoothly driving along the road, you could taste it the technology," Urmson says. "You could really feel the impact and how it's going to change people's lives. It was just amazing." While he was talking, a motorcycle cut us off. The car saw the move coming, and we hardly even noticed. Google's fleet of robotic cars has driven more than 200,000 miles over highways and city streets in California and Nevada. Google did this testing in kind of a legal limbo. These cars aren't forbidden, but, "There was no permission granted for any of that to happen by anybody," says Steve Jurvetson, a venture capitalist and robotic car enthusiast. "It's essential that there be a place to do tests," he says. "There's two ways to do it the seekforgiveness strategy and the seek-permission strategy. Frankly, the 200,000 hours I think that have been driven here in California that's a seek-forgiveness strategy. Right?" If anything went wrong, Google would have had a huge amount of explaining to do. So last year, the company hired a lobbyist in Nevada. "The state of Nevada is close, it's a lot easier to pass laws there than it is in California," Levandowski says. He says Google convinced the state Legislature to pass a law making robotic cars explicitly legal. But the Legislature went further than just creating a place to test these cars it ordered the Department of Motor Vehicles to create basically a driver's license for these robot cars. "I thought it was great," says Bruce Breslow, director of the Nevada DMV. "My grandfather took me to the 1964 World's Fair in New York City many times. And they were promising me the car of the future as an 8-year-old, and I thought to myself, this finally could be it." Starting March 1, companies will be able to apply to test self-driving cars on Nevada roads. "The test vehicles will be Nevada's first red license plate since the 1940s," Breslow says. Think of it like a learner's permit those bright red plates will let everyone know there's a student robot driver behind the wheel. "And eventually when these vehicles are sold, it will be the first ever neon green license plate that the state of Nevada will ever issue green meaning go, and the future's arrived," Breslow says. Google says it will probably be years before cars like this go on sale. But Jurvetson, the venture capitalist, says he's convinced this technology could save thousands of lives "today, already, right now." Robots are never distracted. They don't text or drink or get tired. They see things no human can.
"That front radar catches bounces off the ground," Jurvetson says. "We were driving behind an 18-wheeler, and we saw the vehicles in front of the 18-wheeler vehicles we could not see with our eye because the signal bounced off the pavement... at a glancing angle underneath the 18-wheeler. And so no human will ever have the amount of information that these cars have when they are driving." While Nevada may be the first state to create a licensing system for self-driving cars, it won't be the last; Hawaii, Florida and Oklahoma are already following suit. And Jurvetson says one day we may be asking ourselves if humans should still be allowed to drive.
A two-point response provides examples from two different sources supporting the argument that robots can save lives. Responses are not scored for grammar usage, conventions, spelling, or punctuation. Sample Two-Point Response: According to Source 1 and Source 4, robots can perform life-saving tasks. The Gemini- Scout highlighted in Meet the Robots can locate miners by sensing their body heat. Then it can drag hurt people to safety or bring them water and supplies. Source 4 features a self-driving robot. Its inventors claim that robots are better drivers because they never text, become distracted, or tire. Therefore, the use of a robotic driver could save lives by reducing the number of distracted drivers on the roads. These two types of robots may sound different, but both varieties can be considered life savers. A one-point response provides one or two example(s) from only one source supporting the argument that robots can save lives. Sample One-Point Response: When the Car is the Driver describes a self-driving car that can avoid accidents. During the interviewer s test drive, a motorcycle drove right in front of the car. But because the car anticipated the move, no crash occurred. The ability to make split-second decisions is something computers can do better than humans. The self-driving car could be the everyday minivan of the future. A response that may identify the correct source or sources, but did not provide any relevant examples receives no credit. Sample Zero-Point Response: Robots can do many tasks better than humans, like guiding trains over tracks.
A two-point response provides three practical uses for robots that play. Students may only cite one of the sources and still receive two points. Responses are not scored for grammar usage, conventions, spelling, or punctuation. Sample Two-Point Response: When you hear the term robot, you might think of the hard-working factory robot assembling gritty machines all day, but actually, many robots are built to play. However, even the more playful varieties can have practical applications. Source 3 describes robots that are just like pets, without some of the limitations. Robot pets don t need to be fed or walked. Also, robots like the I-Pet Companion allow people to play with live cats without having to get too close. This approach might be helpful for people who are allergic to cats. Even the shuffleboard-playing robots have some practical advantages. The student designers must work hard to design robots who know how to play the game without direct instructions. The students learn even as the robots are having fun. Each variety adds its own twist to Asimov s concept of the playful robot. A one-point response provides two practical uses for robots that play and may or may not cite a source. Sample One-Point Response: Robots that Play Well With Others describes many different playful robots with practical uses. Robots that resemble animals can help moviemakers set scenes with animals like apes or dinosaurs. Using robots could make for more predictable actors who don t need to take breaks for food or to go outside. Pet robots can provide the same kind of flexibility. People in hospitals could enjoy a pet robot, since they could be allowed anywhere in the building. Both of these types of robots seem playful but actually have important uses.
A response that provides one practical use for robots that play and may or may not cite a source receives no credit. A response that cites a source but provides no practical uses for robots receives no credit. Sample Zero-Point Response: Game-playing robots like the hockey players at the college in Oregon can afford students the chance to practice their programming and design skills.
Two-Point Response: A two-point response correctly identifies at least eight features.
One-Point Response: A one-point response correctly identifies four to seven features. Zero-Point Response: A response that correctly identifies fewer than four features receives no credit.
Student Directions for Part 2 You will now review your sources, take notes, and plan, draft, revise, and edit your story. You may use your notes and refer to the sources. Now read your assignment and the information about how your story will be scored; then begin your work. Your assignment: It is now time to write the science fiction story that you will share with your creative writing club. You have decided to write a multi-paragraph story about a robot that all of a sudden comes alive. Tell the story of what happens. Make sure you develop your characters, setting, and plot using details, dialogue, and description where appropriate. When developing your story, use the source materials to inform and strengthen your writing. Narrative Scoring Your story will be scored using the following: 1. Statement of purpose and organization: How effective was your plot, and did you maintain a logical sequence of events from beginning to end? How well did you establish and develop a setting, narrative, characters, and point of view? How well did you consistently use a variety of transitions? How effective was your opening and closing for your audience and purpose? 2. Elaboration and Evidence: How well did you develop your narrative using description, details, dialogue? How well did you incorporate sensory and figurative language that is appropriate for your audience and purpose? How well did you use relevant material from the sources in your story? 3. Conventions: How well did you follow the rules of grammar usage, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling? Now begin work on your story. Manage your time carefully so that you can 1. plan your multi-paragraph story 2. write your multi-paragraph story 3. revise and edit the final draft of your multi-paragraph story Word-processing tools and spell check are available to you.
For Part 2, you are being asked to write a multi-paragraph story, so please be as thorough as possible. Type your response in the space provided. The box will expand as you type. Remember to check your notes and your prewriting/planning as you write and then revise and edit your story.
Purpose/Organization 4-Point Narrative Performance Task Writing Rubric (Grades 3 8) Score 4 3 2 1 NS The organization of the narrative, real or imagined, is fully sustained and the focus is clear and maintained throughout: an effective plot helps to create a sense of unity and completeness The organization of the narrative, real or imagined, is adequately sustained, and the focus is adequate and generally maintained: an evident plot helps to create a sense of unity and completeness, though there may be minor flaws and some ideas may be loosely connected The organization of the narrative, real or imagined, is somewhat sustained and may have an uneven focus: there may be an inconsistent plot, and/or flaws may be evident The organization of the narrative, real or imagined, may be maintained but may provide little or no focus: there is little or no discernible plot or there may just be a series of events Unintelligible In a language other than English Off-topic Copied text Off-purpose effectively establishes and maintains setting, develops narrator/characters, and maintains point of view* consistent use of a variety of transitional strategies to clarify the relationships between and among ideas; strong connection between and among ideas adequately maintains a setting, develops narrator/characters, and/or maintains point of view* adequate use of a variety of transitional strategies to clarify the relationships between and among ideas unevenly or minimally maintains a setting, develops narrator and/or characters, and/or maintains point of view* uneven use of appropriate transitional strategies and/or little variety may be brief or there is little to no attempt to establish a setting, narrator and/or characters, and/or point of view* few or no appropriate transitional strategies may be evident natural, logical sequence of events from beginning to end adequate sequence of events from beginning to end weak or uneven sequence of events little or no organization of an event sequence; frequent extraneous ideas and/or a major drift may be evident effective opening and closure for audience and purpose adequate opening and closure for audience and purpose opening and closure, if present, are weak opening and/or closure may be missing *point of view begins at grade 7
Development/Elaboration 4-Point Narrative Performance Task Writing Rubric (Grades 3 8) Score 4 3 2 1 NS The narrative, real or imagined, provides thorough, effective elaboration using relevant details, dialogue, and description: experiences, characters, setting and events are clearly developed The narrative, real or imagined, provides adequate elaboration using details, dialogue, and description: experiences, characters, setting, and events are adequately developed The narrative, real or imagined, provides uneven, cursory elaboration using partial and uneven details, dialogue, and description: experiences, characters, setting, and events are unevenly developed The narrative, real or imagined, provides minimal elaboration using few or no details, dialogue, and/or description: experiences, characters, setting, and events may be vague, lack clarity, or confusing Unintelligible In a language other than English Off-topic Copied text Off-purpose connections to source materials may enhance the narrative effective use of a variety of narrative techniques that advance the story or illustrate the experience connections to source materials may contribute to the narrative adequate use of a variety of narrative techniques that generally advance the story or illustrate the experience connections to source materials may be ineffective, awkward or vague but do not interfere with the narrative narrative techniques are uneven and inconsistent connections to source materials, if evident, may detract from the narrative use of narrative techniques may be minimal, absent, incorrect, or irrelevant effective use of sensory, concrete, and figurative language that clearly advances the purpose adequate use of sensory, concrete, and figurative language that generally advances the purpose partial or weak use of sensory, concrete, and figurative language that may not advance the purpose may have little or no use of sensory, concrete, or figurative language; language does not advance and may interfere with the purpose effective, appropriate style enhances the narration generally appropriate style is evident inconsistent or weak attempt to create appropriate style little or no evidence of appropriate style
Conventions 2-Point Narrative Performance Task Writing Rubric (Grades 3-11) Score 2 1 0 NS The response demonstrates an adequate command of conventions: adequate use of correct sentence formation, punctuation, capitalization, grammar usage, and spelling The response demonstrates a partial command of conventions: limited use of correct sentence formation, punctuation, capitalization, grammar usage, and spelling The response demonstrates little or no command of conventions: infrequent use of correct sentence formation, punctuation, capitalization, grammar usage, and spelling Unintelligible In a language other than English Off-topic Copied text Holistic Scoring: (Off-purpose responses will still receive a score in Conventions.) Variety: A range of errors includes formation, punctuation, capitalization, grammar usage, and spelling Severity: Basic errors are more heavily weighted than higher-level errors. Density: The proportion of errors to the amount of writing done well. This includes the ratio of errors to the length of the piece.