2018 MCAS
Grade 4 English Language Arts
Question 8

The narrative is presented from Polo's point of view but lacks development. There are few details, and those included are insufficient to express a complete story or describe the characters, the setting, or the events from Polo's point of view. The story exhibits little organization and contains a poor expression of ideas. For example, it is not clear why Marco insists they leave their owner or escape the "horrible place."

The narrative demonstrates little variety or control of sentence structures. The writing lacks the complexity or length to demonstrate more than minimal control of Standard English conventions for this grade level.