Introducing 6 Traits into Our Writing

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Introducing 6 Traits into Our Writing

• Helping to Make Our Writing More Complete

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Isnt reading student writing fun?

• Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin
  were singers of the Declaration of Independence.
  Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing cats
  backwards and declared, A horse divided against
  itself cannot stand alone. Franklin died and is
  still dead.

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What about these gems?

• Miguel Cervantes wrote Donkey Hote. The next
  great author was John Milton. Milton wrote
  Paradise Lost. Then his wife died. And he wrote
  Paradise Regained.
• Voltaire invented electricity. Gravity was
  invented by him. It is chiefly noticeable in the
  autumn when the apples are falling off the trees.
• Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis.
• Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the
  Organ of Species.
• Madman Curie discovered radio.
• Karl Marx became one of the Marx brothers.

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The Dreaded Writing Assessment.

• What are the Keys to Higher Writing Scores????????

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Key to Higher Writing Scores..

• Write daily.
• Integrate writing with content areas.
• Require students to do more than one draft.
• Model writing.
• Save student work in portfolio or folder.
• Strive for school-wide continuity of instruction.
• Follow a checklist for best practices.

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What are the 6 Traits?
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What are the 61 Traits?

• Voice
• Word Choice
• Conventions
• Sentence Fluency
• Organization
• Ideas
• Presentation

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1.
2.
5.
4.
6.
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Ideas

• Start with the ice cream.
• Whats a sundae without the ice cream?
• The main idea or topic sentence is essential and
  begins the piece.
• All other add-ons or toppings enhance the ice
  cream (main idea).

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Organization

• Hold it all together with the dish.
• The dish (organization) makes the ice cream
  (ideas) easier to grasp and prevents it from
  melting away.

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Word Choice

• Something more to go on that sundae?
• Bananas, candies or chopped nuts also enhance the
  sundae.
• There are many types of add-ons (word choice) to
  compliment your sundae (main idea).

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Voice

• Hot fudge, strawberries, pineapple, enhance the
  ice cream.
• Toppings add individuality to the ice cream (main
  idea). We dont all like the same things on our
  sundaes, do we?
• Without toppings, ice cream is just too blah!

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Sentence Fluency

• Will there be anything else to go on your sundae?
• How about some whipped cream to help the toppings
  flow along?

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Conventions Presentation

• Whats a sundae without a cherry to top it off?
• Polish up your dessert and add the finishing
  touch.
• Its all in the presentation looks CAN fool the
  stomach!
• And now grab a spoon and enjoy!

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Ideas and Content

• Classroom Bank or List
• Journal Page
• Realia
• Literature Experience
• What else?
• http//www.madison.k12.wi.us/tnl/langarts/pdf/6tra
  its/ideas.pdf

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A Closer Look at Word Choice

• Use powerful words that paint a mental picture
  for the reader.
• Add descriptive adjectives to enhance nouns.
• The lumpy brown toad hopped quickly through the
  squishy gooey mud.
• Verbs should be strong action words.
• The cows stampeded through the field.
• The cows sauntered through the field.

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What else?

• Try to use specific, rather than general nouns.
• The car zoomed down the street. The 1957 Chevy
  zoomed down the street.
• Use language that is comfortable, not flowery
  or stuffy.
• I shall not follow you.
• Avoid slang and cliches.
• He was fixin to finish his homework.

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Lets Give it a Try!

• The toad ______through the mud..
• The ______ toad ________through the _________mud.
• The _______ ________ toad __________ ________
  through the _________ _________ mud.
• For more ideas, see Connies Write On Sentence
  Stretchers. http//jc-schools.net/write/stretching
  _files/frame.htm

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And Theres More

• Avoid repetition.
• She liked to dance and she liked to skate and she
  liked to sing.
• Make sure to use words correctly.
• There driving to theyre house and will arrive
  their by noon.
• Unless you are Hemmingway or Hawthorne, be
  concise.

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Sample Strategies for Teaching Word Choice

• Use cartoon bubbles.
• Peer edits circle 5 words in your partners
  paper that could be stronger.
• During teacher read-alouds point out concrete
  examples of strong language. (Toad) Post word
  lists around the room. Use specific parts of
  speech.

• Encourage use of a Thesaurus. (How many words for
  blue are there?)
• Encourage students to use senses to describe an
  object. Use colored pencils to underline sensory
  words.

adapted from http//6traits.cyberspace.net/strat
6.html
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Lets Give it a Try!
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Using our common senses.

• The old man grumbled a bit as he wiped his teary
  eye with the back of his gnarled hand. He could
  taste the salt as he rubbed his parched lips. He
  glanced at his silent wife standing a short
  distance away. She too was old, but he still saw
  in her wrinkled face the pretty young girl he had
  married. She still smelled like freshly mowed
  spring grass.

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Using our common senses.

• The old man grumbled a bit as he wiped his teary
  eye with the back of his gnarled hand. He could
  taste the salt as he rubbed his parched lips. He
  glanced at his silent wife standing a short
  distance away. She too was old, but he still saw
  in her wrinkled face the pretty young girl he had
  married. She still smelled like freshly mowed
  spring grass.

Key sound touch taste sight smell
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Making Word Posters

• Tombstone Words

• Sparkle Words

pretty good so a lot said
terrifying ear-splitting squishy scrumptious copio
us
Encourage your students to add to the
lists. http//jc-schools.net/write/Shining-Words_f
iles/frame.htm http//www.madison.k12.wi.us/tnl/la
ngarts/pdf/6traits/word_choice.pdf
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Teacher Read Alouds for Teaching Word Choice

• Maniac Magee, Spinelli
• The BFG, Dahl
• A Wrinkle in Time. LEngle
• Anne of Green Gables, Montgomery

• Lizards for Lunch, Storad
• Half a Moon and One Whole Star, Dragonwagon
• Toad, Ruth Brown

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Now Lets Examine Sentence Fluency

• Let your writing develop an easy flow or rhythm.
• Aim to make your writing ache to be read aloud.
• He moved like a slow-motion instant replay.
  (Christopher Myers)
• Use complete sentences.
• Slept soundly in the crib.
• The baby slept soundly in the crib.

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What else should a good writer do?

• Vary sentence lengths.
• He wore a red shirt. He had on brown slacks. His
  jacket was wrinkled.
• He wore a wrinkled jacket over a red shirt with
  brown slacks.
• Vary sentence beginnings.
• I like to sing. I like to play
• the piano.
• I like to sing. Playing the piano
• is my favorite pastime.

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Anything else?

• Try different sentence structures.
• The cow jumped over the moon. The dish ran away
  with the spoon.
• The cow jumped over the moon. Did you see the
  dish run away with that spoon? What an incredible
  sight!
• http//jc-schools.net/write/I-Trouble.ppt
• http//www.madison.k12.wi.us/tnl/langarts/pdf/6tra
  its/sentence_fluency.pdf

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Ideas to Teach Sentence Fluency

• Read examples of good fluency and poor fluency.
• Stress to students that sentences need to flow.
  Avoid choppy sentences.
• Make sure students know the difference between a
  phrase and a sentence.
• Have students tell their story into a tape
  player. Writing is a way of speaking on paper.

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How about a little Faulkner?

• Frenchman's Bend was a section of rich
  river-bottom country lying twenty miles southeast
  of Jefferson. Hill-cradled and remote, definite
  yet without boundaries, straddling into two
  counties and owning allegiance to neither, it had
  been the original grant and site of a tremendous
  pre-Civil War plantation, the ruins of which the
  gutted shell of an enormous house with its fallen
  stables and slave quarters and overgrown gardens
  and brick terraces and promenadeswere still
  known as the Old Frenchman's place, although the
  original boundaries now existed only on old faded
  records in the Chancery Clerk's office in the
  county courthouse in Jefferson, and even some of
  the once-fertile fields had long since reverted
  to the cane-and-cypress jungle from which their
  first master had hewn them.

The Hamlet, William Faulkner
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Teacher Read Alouds to Model Sentence Fluency

• Sarah, Plain and Tall, MacLachlan
• The Van Gogh Café, Rylant
• Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis

• Stealing Freedom, Carbone

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Moving on to Voice

• Always write from your heart and share your
  feelings with the reader.
• Avoid using you.
• Try not to sound like an encyclopedia.

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Tell me more.

• Invest yourself in what you write. Proudly take
  ownership.
• Connect with your audience.
• Give the reader a glimpse at the person behind
  the pen.

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Strategies to Teach Voice

• Rewrite a popular story from a different
  characters point of view. (The Real Story of the
  Three Little Pigs).
• Read stories with vivid images. Have students
  close their eyes and draw what they see.
• Read segments of dialogue and have students guess
  who is speaking. (Charlottes Web)
• Do some Author Studies to compare voice. What is
  the voice behind Stephen King?
• http//www.madison.k12.wi.us/tnl/langarts/pdf/6tra
  its/voice.pdf

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Teacher Read Alouds for Voice

• Bridge to Terabithia, Paterson
• Tuck Everlasting, Babbitt
• Ramona Forever, Cleary

• Charlottes Web, White
• Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing, Blume
• Treasure Island, Stevenson

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Bringing new voices into the classroom..

• Solomom had three hundred wives and seven hundred
  porcupines.
• Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went
  around giving people advice. They killed him.
  Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After
  that his career suffered a dramatic decline.
• Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they
  all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah
  Dessert. The climate of Sarah is such that
  inhabitants have to live elsewhere.

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For more information

• Kims Korner for Teacher Talk
• http//www.angelfire.com/ks/teachme/ideasdescripto
  rs.
• html
• 6 Traits Homepage
• http//6traits.cyberspaces.net/
• 6 1 Trait Writing
• http//www.nwrel.org/assessment/
• 6 Trait Lesson Plans
• http//www.kent.k12.wa.us/staff/LindaJancola/6Trai
  t/lessons.htmWord20Choice

• A GREAT Site!!
• http//www.madison.k12.wi.us/tnl/langarts/sixtrtcr
  smtrl.htm