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Learning Standards and Guidelines > English Language Arts > Content Strands > Sample Performance Tasks

Sample Performance Tasks

From the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts Appendix B: Text Exemplars and Sample Performance Tasks

The text exemplars are supplemented by brief performance tasks that further clarify the meaning of the Standards.  These sample tasks illustrate specifically the application of the Standards to texts of sufficient complexity, quality, and range.

Relevant Reading standards are noted in brackets following each task, and the words in italics in the task reflect the wording of the Reading standard itself. (Individual grade-specific Reading standards are identified by their strand, grade, and number, so that RI.4.3, for example, stands for Reading, Informational Text, grade 4, standard 3.)

Click on a link below to view that grade level's corresponding sample performance tasks.

Grades K-1

Grades 2-3

Grades 4-5

Grades 6-8

Grades 9-10

Grade 11-CCR (College and Career Readiness)

 

 

Grades K-1

Text Exemplars (PDF)

Sample Performance Tasks for Stories and Poetry

  • Students (with prompting and support from the teacher) describe the relationship between key events of the overall story of Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik to the corresponding scenes illustrated by Maurice Sendak. [RL.K.7]
  • Students retell Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad Together while demonstrating their understanding of a central message or lesson of the story (e.g., how friends are able to solve problems together or how hard work pays off). [RL.1.2]
  • Students (with prompting and support from the teacher) compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of the owl in Arnold Lobel’s Owl at Home to those of the owl in Edward Lear’s poem “The Owl and the Pussycat.” [RL.K.9]
  • Students read two texts on the topic of pancakes (Tomie DePaola’s Pancakes for Breakfast and Christina Rossetti’s “Mix a Pancake”) and distinguish between the text that is a storybook and the text that is a poem. [RL.K.5]
  • After listening to L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, students describe the characters of Dorothy, Auntie Em, and Uncle Henry, the setting of Kansan prairie, and major events such as the arrival of the cyclone. [RL.1.3]
  • Students (with prompting and support from the teacher) when listening to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House in the Big Woods ask questions about the events that occur (such as the encounter with the bear) and answer by offering key details drawn from the text. [RL.1.1]
  • Students identify the points at which different characters are telling the story in the Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson. [RL.1.6]
  • Students identify words and phrases within Molly Bang’s The Paper Crane that appeal to the senses and suggest the feelings of happiness experienced by the owner of the restaurant (e.g., clapped, played, loved, overjoyed). [RL.1.4]

Sample Performance Tasks for Informational Texts

  • Students identify the reasons Clyde Robert Bulla gives in his book A Tree Is a Plant in support of his point about the function of roots in germination. [RI.1.8]
  • Students identify Edith Thacher Hurd as the author of Starfish and Robin Brickman as the illustrator of the text and define the role and materials each contributes to the text. [RI.K.6]
  • Students (with prompting and support from the teacher) read “Garden Helpers” in National Geographic Young Explorers and demonstrate their understanding of the main idea of the text—not all bugs are bad—by retelling key details. [RI.K.2]
  • After listening to Gail Gibbons’ Fire! Fire!, students ask questions about how firefighters respond to a fire and answer using key details from the text. [RI.1.1]
  • Students locate key facts or information in Claire Llewellyn’s Earthworms by using various text features (headings, table of contents, glossary) found in the text. [RI.1.5]
  • Students ask and answer questions about animals (e.g., hyena, alligator, platypus, scorpion) they encounter in Steve Jenkins and Robin Page’s What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? [RI.K.4]
  • Students use the illustrations along with textual details in Wendy Pfeffer’s From Seed to Pumpkin to describe the key idea of how a pumpkin grows. [RI.1.7]
  • Students (with prompting and support from the teacher) describe the connection between drag and flying in Fran Hodgkins and True Kelley’s How People Learned to Fly by performing the “arm spinning” experiment described in the text. [RI.K.3]

 

 

Grades 2-3

Text Exemplars (PDF)

Sample Performance Tasks for Stories and Poetry

  • Students ask and answer questions regarding the plot of Patricia MacLachlan’s Sarah, Plain and Tall, explicitly referring to the book to form the basis for their answers. [RL.3.1]
  • Students explain how Mark Teague’s illustrations contribute to what is conveyed in Cynthia Rylant’s Poppleton in Winter to create the mood and emphasize aspects of characters and setting in the story. [RL.3.7]
  • Students read fables and folktales from diverse cultures that represent various origin tales, such as Rudyard Kipling’s “How the Camel Got His Hump” and Natalie Babbitt’s The Search for Delicious, and paraphrase their central message, lesson, or moral. [RL.2.2]
  • Students describe the overall story structure of The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber, describing how the interactions of the characters of the Duke and Princess Saralinda introduce the beginning of the story and how the suspenseful plot comes to an end. [RL.2.5]
  • When discussing E. B. White’s book Charlotte’s Web, students distinguish their own point of view regarding Wilbur the Pig from that of Fern Arable as well as from that of the narrator. [RL.3.6]
  • Students describe how the character of Bud in Christopher Paul Curtis’ story Bud, Not Buddy responds to a major event in his life of being placed in a foster home. [RL.2.3]
  • Students read Paul Fleischman’s poem “Fireflies,” determining the meaning of words and phrases in the poem, particularly focusing on identifying his use of nonliteral language (e.g., “light is the ink we use”) and talking about how it suggests meaning. [RL.3.4]

Sample Performance Tasks for Informational Texts

  • Students read Aliki’s description of A Medieval Feast and demonstrate their understanding of all that goes into such an event by asking questions pertaining to who, what, where, when, why, and how such a meal happens and by answering using key details. [RI.2.1]
  • Students describe the reasons behind Joyce Milton’s statement that bats are nocturnal in her Bats: Creatures of the Night and how she supports the points she is making in the text. [RI.2.8]
  • Students read Selby Beeler’s Throw Your Tooth on the Roof: Tooth Traditions Around the World and identify what Beeler wants to answer as well as explain the main purpose of the text. [RI.2.6]
  • Students determine the meanings of words and phrases encountered in Sarah L. Thomson’s Where Do Polar Bears Live?, such as cub, den, blubber, and the Arctic. [RI.2.4]
  • Students explain how the main idea that Lincoln had “many faces” in Russell Freedman’s Lincoln: A Photobiography is supported by key details in the text. [RI.3.2]
  • Students read Robert Coles’s retelling of a series of historical events in The Story of Ruby Bridges. Using their knowledge of how cause and effect gives order to events, they use specific language to describe the sequence of events that leads to Ruby desegregating her school. [RI.3.3]
  • Students explain how the specific image of a soap bubble and other accompanying illustrations in Walter Wick’s A Drop of Water: A Book of Science and Wonder contribute to and clarify their understanding of bubbles and water. [RI.2.7]
  • Students use text features, such as the table of contents and headers, found in Aliki’s text Ah, Music! to identify relevant sections and locate information relevant to a given topic (e.g., rhythm, instruments, harmony) quickly and efficiently. [RI.3.5]

 

 

Grades 4-5

Text Exemplars (PDF)

Sample Performance Tasks for Stories and Poetry

  • Students make connections between the visual presentation of John Tenniel’s illustrations in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the text of the story to identify how the pictures of Alice reflect specific descriptions of her in the text. [RL.4.7]
  • Students explain the selfish behavior by Mary and make inferences regarding the impact of the cholera outbreak in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden by explicitly referring to details and examples from the text. [RL.4.1]
  • Students describe how the narrator’s point of view in Walter Farley’s The Black Stallion influences how events are described and how the reader perceives the character of Alexander Ramsay, Jr. [RL.5.6]
  • Students summarize the plot of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince and then reflect on the challenges facing the characters in the story while employing those and other details in the text to discuss the value of inquisitiveness and exploration as a theme of the story. [RL.5.2]
  • Students read Natalie Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting and describe in depth the idyllic setting of the story, drawing on specific details in the text, from the color of the sky to the sounds of the pond, to describe the scene. [RL.4.3]
  • Students compare and contrast coming-of-age stories by Christopher Paul Curtis (Bud, Not Buddy) and Louise Erdrich (The Birchbark House) by identifying similar themes and examining the stories’ approach to the topic of growing up. [RL.5.9]
  • Students refer to the structural elements (e.g., verse, rhythm, meter) of Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat” when analyzing the poem and contrasting the impact and differences of those elements to a prose summary of the poem. [RL.4.5]
  • Students determine the meaning of the metaphor of a cat in Carl Sandburg’s poem “Fog” and contrast that figurative language to the meaning of the simile in William Blake’s “The Echoing Green.” [RL.5.4]

Sample Performance Tasks for Informational Texts

  • Students explain how Melvin Berger uses reasons and evidence in his book Discovering Mars: The Amazing Story of the Red Planet to support particular points regarding the topology of the planet. [RI.4.8]
  • Students identify the overall structure of ideas, concepts, and information in Seymour Simon’s Horses (based on factors such as their speed and color) and compare and contrast that scheme to the one employed by Patricia Lauber in her book Hurricanes: Earth’s Mightiest Storms. [RI.5.5]
  • Students interpret the visual chart that accompanies Steve Otfinoski’s The Kid’s Guide to Money: Earning It, Saving It, Spending It, Growing It, Sharing It and explain how the information found within it contributes to an understanding of how to create a budget. [RI.4.7]
  • Students explain the relationship between time and clocks using specific information drawn from Bruce Koscielniak’s About Time: A First Look at Time and Clocks. [RI.5.3]
  • Students determine the meaning of domain-specific words or phrases, such as crust, mantle, magma, and lava, and important general academic words and phrases that appear in Seymour Simon’s Volcanoes. [RI.4.4]
  • Students compare and contrast a firsthand account of African American ballplayers in the Negro Leagues to a secondhand account of their treatment found in books such as Kadir Nelson’s We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball, attending to the focus of each account and the information provided by each. [RI.4.6]
  • Students quote accurately and explicitly from Leslie Hall’s “Seeing Eye to Eye” to explain statements they make and ideas they infer regarding sight and light. [RI.5.1]
  • Students determine the main idea of Colin A. Ronan’s “Telescopes” and create a summary by explaining how key details support his distinctions regarding different types of telescopes. [RI.4.2]

 

 

Grades 6-8

Text Exemplars (PDF)

Sample Performance Tasks for Stories, Drama, and Poetry

  • Students summarize the development of the morality of Tom Sawyer in Mark Twain’s novel of the same name and analyze its connection to themes of accountability and authenticity by noting how it is conveyed through characters, setting, and plot. [RL.8.2]
  • Students compare and contrast Laurence Yep’s fictional portrayal of Chinese immigrants in turn-of-the-twentieth-century San Francisco in Dragonwings to historical accounts of the same period (using materials detailing the 1906 San Francisco earthquake) in order to glean a deeper understanding of how authors use or alter historical sources to create a sense of time and place as well as make fictional characters lifelike and real. [RL.7.9]
  • Students cite explicit textual evidence as well as draw inferences about the drake and the duck from Katherine Paterson’s The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks to support their analysis of the perils of vanity. [RL.6.1]
  • Students explain how Sandra Cisneros’s choice of words develops the point of view of the young speaker in her story “Eleven.” [RL.6.6]
  • Students analyze how the playwright Louise Fletcher uses particular elements of drama (e.g., setting and dialogue) to create dramatic tension in her play Sorry, Wrong Number. [RL.7.3]
  • Students compare and contrast the effect Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” has on them to the effect they experience from a multimedia dramatization of the event presented in an interactive digital map (http://www.paulreverehouse.org/ride/), analyzing the impact of different techniques employed that are unique to each medium. [RL.6.7]

Sample Performance Tasks for Informational Texts: English Language Arts

  • Students determine the point of view of John Adams in his “Letter on Thomas Jefferson” and analyze how he distinguishes his position from an alternative approach articulated by Thomas Jefferson. [RI.7.6]
  • Students provide an objective summary of Frederick Douglass’s Narrative. They analyze how the central idea regarding the evils of slavery is conveyed through supporting ideas and developed over the course of the text. [RI.8.2]
  • Students trace the line of argument in Winston Churchill’s “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat” address to Parliament and evaluate his specific claims and opinions in the text, distinguishing which claims are supported by facts, reasons, and evidence, and which are not. [RI.6.8]
  • Students analyze in detail how the early years of Harriet Tubman (as related by author Ann Petry) contributed to her later becoming a conductor on the Underground Railroad, attending to how the author introduces, illustrates, and elaborates upon the events in Tubman’s life. [RI.6.3]
  • Students determine the figurative and connotative meanings of words such as wayfaring, laconic, and taciturnity as well as of phrases such as hold his peace in John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: In Search of America. They analyze how Steinbeck’s specific word choices and diction impact the meaning and tone of his writing and the characterization of the individuals and places he describes. [RI.7.4]

 

 

Grades 9-10

Text Exemplars (PDF)

Sample Performance Tasks for Stories, Drama, and Poetry

  • Students analyze how the character of Odysseus from Homer’s Odyssey—a “man of twists and turns”—reflects conflicting motivations through his interactions with other characters in the epic poem. They articulate how his conflicting loyalties during his long and complicated journey home from the Trojan War both advance the plot of Homer’s epic and develop themes. [RL.9–10.3]
  • Students analyze how Michael Shaara in his Civil War novel The Killer Angels creates a sense of tension and even surprise regarding the outcome of events at the Battle of Gettysburg through pacing, ordering of events, and the overarching structure of the novel. [RL.9–10.5]
  • Students analyze in detail the theme of relationships between mothers and daughters and how that theme develops over the course of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. Students search the text for specific details that show how the theme emerges and how it is shaped and refined over the course of the novel. [RL.9–10.2]
  • Students analyze how the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa in his film Throne of Blood draws on and trans-forms Shakespeare’s play Macbeth in order to develop a similar plot set in feudal Japan. [RL.9–10.9]
  • Students analyze how artistic representations of Ramses II (the pharaoh who reigned during the time of Moses) vary, basing their analysis on what is emphasized or absent in different treatments of the pharaoh in works of art (e.g., images in the British Museum) and in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias.” [RL.9–10.7]

Sample Performance Tasks for Informational Texts: English Language Arts  

  • Students compare George Washington’s Farewell Address to other foreign policy statements, such as the Monroe Doctrine, and analyze how both texts address similar themes and concepts regarding “entangling alliances.” [RI.9–10.9]
  • Students analyze how Abraham Lincoln in his “Second Inaugural Address” unfolds his examination of the ideas that led to the Civil War, paying particular attention to the order in which the points are made, how Lincoln introduces and develops his points, and the connections that are drawn between them. [RI.9–10.3]
  • Students evaluate the argument and specific claims about the “spirit of liberty” in Learned Hand’s “I Am an American Day Address,” assessing the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence and the validity of his reasoning. [RI.9–10.8]
  • Students determine the purpose and point of view in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, “I Have a Dream” speech and analyze how King uses rhetoric to advance his position. [RI.9–10.6]

 

 

Grades 11–CCR

Text Exemplars (PDF)

Sample Performance Tasks for Stories, Drama, and Poetry

  • Students analyze the first impressions given of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet in the opening chapter of Pride and Prejudice based on the setting and how the characters are introduced. By comparing these first impressions with their later understanding based on how the action is ordered and the characters develop over the course of the novel, students understand the impact of Jane Austen’s choices in relating elements of a story. [RL.11–12.3]
  • Students compare and contrast how the protagonists of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter maintain their integrity when confronting authority, and they relate their analysis of that theme to other portrayals in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century foundational works of American literature they have read. [RL.11–12.9]
  • Students analyze how Anton Chekhov’s choice of structuring his story “Home” by beginning in “midstream” shapes the meaning of the text and contributes to its overall narrative arc. [RL.11–12.5]
  • Students provide an objective summary of F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby wherein they analyze how over the course of the text different characters try to escape the worlds they come from, including whose help they get and whether anybody succeeds in escaping. [RL.11–12.2]
  • Students analyze Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote and Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Molière’s Tartuffe for how what is directly stated in a text differs from what is really meant, comparing and contrasting the point of view adopted by the protagonist in each work. [RL.11–12.6]
  • Students compare two or more recorded or live productions of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman to the written text, evaluating how each version interprets the source text and debating which aspects of the enacted interpretations of the play best capture a particular character, scene, or theme. [RL.11–12.7]
  • Students compare and contrast the figurative and connotative meanings as well as specific word choices in John Donne’s “Valediction Forbidding Mourning” and Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Would Not Stop for Death” in order to determine how the metaphors of the carriage and the compass shape the meaning and tone of each poem. Students analyze the ways both poets use language that is particularly fresh, engaging, or beautiful to convey the multiple meanings regarding death contained in each poem. [RL.11–12.4]
  • Students cite strong and thorough textual evidence from John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” to support their analysis of what the poem says explicitly about the urn as well as what can be inferred about the urn from evidence in the poem. Based on their close reading, students draw inferences from the text regarding what meanings the figures decorating the urn convey as well as noting where the poem leaves matters about the urn and its decoration uncertain. [RL.11–12.1]

Sample Performance Tasks for Informational Texts: English Language Arts

  • Students delineate and evaluate the argument that Thomas Paine makes in Common Sense. They assess the reasoning present in his analysis, including the premises and purposes of his essay. [RI.11–12.8]
  • Students analyze Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, identifying its purpose and evaluating rhetorical features such as the listing of grievances. Students compare and contrast the themes and argument found there to those of other U.S. documents of historical and literary significance, such as the Olive Branch Petition. [RI.11–12.9]
  • Students provide an objective summary of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden wherein they analyze how he articulates the central ideas of living simply and being self-reliant and how those ideas interact and build on one another (e.g., “According to Thoreau, how specifically does moving toward complexity in one’s life undermine self-reliance?”) [RI.11–12.2]
  • Students analyze how the key term success is interpreted, used, and refined over the course of G. K. Chester-ton’s essay “The Fallacy of Success.” [RI.11–12.4]
  • Students determine Richard Hofstadter’s purpose and point of view in his “Abraham Lincoln and the Self-Made Myth,” analyzing how both Hofstadter’s style and content contribute to the eloquent and powerful contrast he draws between the younger, ambitious Lincoln and the sober, more reflective man of the presidential years. [RI.11–12.6]

Sample Performance Tasks for Informational Texts: History/Social Studies & Science, Mathematics, and Technical Subjects

  • Students determine the central ideas found in the Declaration of Sentiments by the Seneca Falls Conference, noting the parallels between it and the Declaration of Independence and providing a summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideas of each text and between the texts. [RH.11–12.2]
  • Students evaluate the premises of James M. McPherson’s argument regarding why Northern soldiers fought in the Civil War by corroborating the evidence provided from the letters and diaries of these soldiers with other primary and secondary sources and challenging McPherson’s claims where appropriate. [RH.11–12.8]
  • Students integrate the information provided by Mary C. Daly, vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, with the data presented visually in the FedViews report. In their analysis of these sources of information presented in diverse formats, students frame and address a question or solve a problem raised by their evaluation of the evidence. [RH.11–12.7]
  • Students analyze the hierarchical relationships between phrase searches and searches that use basic Boolean operators in Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest’s Google Hacks: Tips & Tools for Smarter Searching, 2nd Edition.  [RST.11–12.5]
  • Students analyze the concept of mass based on their close reading of Gordon Kane’s “The Mysteries of Mass” and cite specific textual evidence from the text to answer the question of why elementary particles have mass at all. Students explain important distinctions the author makes regarding the Higgs field and the Higgs boson and their relationship to the concept of mass. [RST.11–12.1]
  • Students determine the meaning of key terms such as hydraulic, trajectory, and torque as well as other domain-specific words and phrases such as actuators, antilock brakes, and traction control used in Mark Fischetti’s “Working Knowledge: Electronic Stability Control.” [RST.11–12.4]

 

 

 

9/15/10

 

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