ELA/Literacy Summative Assessment Blueprint
The ELA Blueprint provides an overview to the types and content of items and tasks that appear on the Smarter Balanced student test forms. The document starts with a blueprint overview, by claim, for each of grade levels 3-5, 6-8 and 11. Initial charts show the major content categories comprising each claim (for example, within the Reading Claim, reading literature, reading informational text), and for each category, the number of stimuli (text passages) and items/tasks that can be included on the computer adaptive test (CAT) and Performance Task components of each test form. Following this overview, the next set of tables detail, by CAT or Performance Task component, the assessment targets that will be included within each content category and the possible number and DOK levels of items addressing each target. Here, too, you can see the total possible items/tasks addressing each content category.
Footnotes provide important information, particularly about the minimum numbers of items that will be included at higher levels of DOK (levels 3 and 4). Also be aware that the blueprint provides information on the number of items that test forms will include, not the score value of these items. Items that have multiple point rubrics – for example, the research and full write items and tasks in the performance task component – will have more weight in students’ total score than is evident in simple item counts.