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Work Sample & Commentary: Mom and the World Trade Center Bombing
The task
As part of Women’s History month, students were asked to write a personal narrative account about a woman they knew.

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Circumstances of performance
This sample of student work was produced under the following conditions:
alone in a group
in class as homework
with teacher feedback with peer feedback
timed opportunity for revision

What the work shows
c Writing: The student produces a narrative account (fictional or autobiographical) that:
• engages the reader by establishing a context, creating a point of view, and otherwise developing reader interest;
• establishes a situation, plot, point of view, setting, and conflict (and for autobiography, the significance of events);
• creates an organizing structure;
• includes sensory details and concrete language to develop plot and character;
• excludes extraneous details and inconsistencies;
• develops complex characters;
• uses a range of appropriate strategies, such as dialogue and tension or suspense;
• provides a sense of closure to the writing.

The work engages the reader by establishing the World Trade Center bombing as the context of the narrative since this event has become part of the local history. The first sentence opens the work by establishing a sense of foreboding, “…is a day I will never forget.” This is reinforced by the foreshadowing in the second sentence when the mother tells the boy to have “a good day.”
This work sample illustrates a standard-setting performance for the following part of the standards:
c

Writing: Produce a narrative account.
The student created an organizing structure by using the chronological order of the day’s events. Tension and suspense are built into the narrative as the reader sees the day’s events from the point of view of the boy waiting for news of his mother. The student successfully conveyed his own fears while waiting for the safe return of his mother.
With this phrase, “…until I returned…,” the mood and the pacing of the piece changes. The television (with its implicit noise and live coverage) shifts the tempo up and the sentence structures change from sentences where the student is the passive subject to sentences where he is the active subject, “I was scared…,” “I wanted…,” “I needed….”
The student related the story in concrete language which focuses the narrative first on the student’s anguish and then on his mother’s bravery. The student used some sensory details when describing the stairwells in the building.
The work closes with a rephrasing of the first sentence which includes the student’s gratitude for the safe return of his mother.