Overview

Students will be asked to read “Hope is the Thing with Feathers” by Emily Dickinson. Students will write a paragraph or two, including a topic sentence, describing the meaning and tone of the poem, as well as an analysis of Dickinson’s use of word choice, structure, and other literary elements that develop meaning and tone.

Students will cite specific examples from the poem along with explanations. This can be completed in the paper version of the Student Booklet or an electronic version of the Student Booklet.

This assessment can be used in this grade after the elements of poetry have been taught and students are at least partially familiar with literary elements such as word choice, structure, and so forth. Specifically, students will be focusing on meaning and tone for this assessment.

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Details

Big Ideas & Competencies

Big Ideas Competencies

A. Reading Literature

Students can read with purpose, understand and analyze evidence in literature to construct meaning in increasingly complex texts.

A2

Students can explain the creative choices (e.g., word choice, structure, and literary elements) of an author and analyze the impact of the creative choices on meaning and tone.

F. Style and Language

Students can apply conventions of grammar and use academic and domain-specific vocabulary.

F5

Students can determine the meanings of unknown words and phrases using context and word relationships.

NOTE ABOUT ASSESSMENT RUBRICS

Below are analytic teacher rubrics. The column on the left shows the dimension that is being measured in the student’s performance. The levels across the top row indicate the performance level in the dimensions. Occasionally all dimensions and performance levels are exemplified by multiple students in a single recording.

Teacher Rubric

Dimensions Not Yet Meeting Expectations Meeting Expectations Exceeding Expectations

Focus/Organization
  • Partially addresses the expectations of the prompt.
  • Introduces a claim but some sentences do not relate to tone and/or meaning of the poem.
  • Lacks structure.
No exemplars at this time.
  • Addresses the expectations of the prompt.
  • Clearly establishes a credible claim but is missing some components such as evidence, and explanations that support the claim.
  • Uses a somewhat coherent structure to organize and group related ideas and explanations. 
No exemplars at this time.
  • Fully and thoroughly addresses the expectations of the prompt.
  • Clearly establishes a credible claim and maintains the claim using evidence, and explanations that support the claim.
  • Uses a coherent and sophisticated body structure to organize and group related ideas, reasons, evidence, and explanations that support the claim.
No exemplars at this time.

Development/Comprehension
  • Supports a claim with unfounded reasons and/or evidence or reasons and evidence are not related to the claim.
  • Provides a weak explanation of the evidence demonstrating minimal understanding of tone and/or meaning.
No exemplars at this time.
  • Supports a claim with clear reasons and relevant evidence from credible sources.
  • Provides an explanation of the evidence to demonstrate an understanding of the tone and meaning.
No exemplars at this time.
  • Supports a claim with clear reasons and relevant and precise evidence from accurate credible sources.
  • Provides a clear and insightful explanation of the evidence demonstrating a thorough understanding of the topic or texts.
No exemplars at this time.

Conventions
  • Paragraph is missing capital letters and end punctuation. There is no, or almost no, attempt to use quotation marks (when applicable).
No exemplars at this time.
  • Partially includes capital letters and end punctuation. There is an attempt to use quotation marks when quoting text directly (when applicable).
No exemplars at this time.
  • All sentences have capital letters and end punctuation. Quotation marks are included when quoting the text directly (when applicable).
No exemplars at this time.

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