2025 ELA Performance Tasks Student Writing Samples for Indiana ILEARN, Grades 3-8
- Carrie Rosebrock
- Apr 11
- 2 min read
On April 8, 2025, the Indiana Department of Education released their Google Drive Folder ILEARN ELA Performance Tasks to provide updated, scored, sample responses from students.
The folder is organized by 5 sub-folders to identify the genre or purpose of writing sample. Click on the links below to move to a particular genre of writing or to view the released performance tasks prompts.
Includes Grade 8 samples
Includes Grades 3 and 7 samples
Includes Grades 4 and 6 samples
Includes Grade 5 samples
I wouldn't be discouraged or frustrated by the fact that they do not provide each grade with a sample for each genre. There is plenty our students can learn analyzing the examples provided and comparing their own writings to the samples.
The IDOE previously released their more streamlined writing rubrics within the Learning Lab. From what I can see, the content of how the writing is scored is nearly the same as the previous 3 years (when we used the Smarter Balanced rubrics). One nice additional feature is that these revised rubrics break down skills by grade level. Again, there isn't a huge variance of expectation between the grades--but it's still nice to see. To view the rubrics, create a free account to access the Learning Lab.
In Indiana, ILEARN is literally just around the corner (as in, next week). Depending on your testing window, you might be able to review a few of these samples with your students--but I wouldn't stress if that's not the case. You have no doubt spent plenty of time over the past nine months teaching and practicing essay development. Your students are ready!
What I would suggest (shameless plug time) is that you do have final conversations with your writers about the need to use scratch/blank paper to analyze the texts, breakdown the prompt, and pre-write. Urging your students to get their thoughts down on paper before they type their responses is the most beneficial step you can take. Edutopia recently shared an awesome article related to this topic: Teaching Middle School Students to Use Notes for Sense-Making.
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