Learn to Score Student Writing the SmART Way!

By | November 30, 2020

New Smarter Annotated Response Tool (SmART) Now Available

Smarter Balanced worked with educators to create the Smarter Annotated Response Tool (SmART), a dynamic tool that supports educators in understanding how student writing is scored on Smarter Balanced assessments. Educators can use SmART to explore how different student responses are scored across the grade levels and writing purposes to understand deeply into how the rubrics are applied to each student’s response. SmART annotations describe how elements of student responses demonstrate the characteristics of the rubrics at various score points.

Learn What Writing Tasks Measure
Smarter Balanced’s writing performance tasks challenge students to demonstrate critical thinking skills, as they examine  multiple sources on a commontopic and then write a response based on a specificaudience and purpose.

SmART can support professional development so that teachers understand  what to look for when reviewing student writing and practice scoring using  the rubrics with their colleagues.

Inside SmART
SmART annotations describe how elements of student responses demonstrate the characteristics of the rubrics at various  score points.

Homepage of the SmART website.
Homepage of the SmART website, which provides an entry point into student writing responses and the annotations that explain how they are scored and why they earned specific point values.

SmART Allows Educators to:

  • Browse a range of student responses in response to different writing purposes.
  • Dive deeper into annotations describing why a given student response warrants a particular score point.
  • Better understand student scores, score student work, and practice implementing the scoring rubrics.
  • Learn about terminology used to describe scoring student written responses on Smarter Balanced assessments.
  • Use practice test responses to help determine instructional next steps.
Screenshot of Astronaut performance task with an overview of Traits & Scores.
Screenshot of Astronaut performance task with an overview of traits like organization/purpose, development/elaboration, and conventions and corresponding scores assigned to each.

Using SmART
Educators can explore how different student responses are scored across the grade levels and writing purposes to have a clear understanding how the rubrics are applied to each student’s response.

Educators Can Use SmART to Understand:

  • What knowledge and skills are expected for the writing traits, and where students may need additional support.
  • Reasons student responses are not assigned a score.
  • Grade-level expectations for student responses at each of the score points identified by the rubric.

Ready look deeper in student writing and scoring? Visit SmART.SmarterBalanced.org to explore!

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