6-Traits PowerPoint Resources

This is worth looking at! There are many power point projects on this site that you can download and use for class or parent presentations. Take a look!

http://languagearts.pppst.com/6traits.html

6-Traits Writing Online: Enroll Now!

Teaching and Assessing Writing with the 6 Traits: Classes are are Filling Fast!

WRITING COURSE:
EDUC 744 909F Teaching and Assessing Writing with the 6-Traits - Middle/High School (Gr. 5-12) 3 gr. cr. begins October 1, 2007

Learn to teach and assess writing with the 6-Traits of writing (voice, ideas, word choice, organization, sentence fluency and conventions). Learn to use the 6-Traits with the writing process to teach revision strategies. Help learners meet higher standards and improve test scores.

Please forward this announcement to teachers in your district.

Earn graduate credits via online courses that support your professional development goals for licensure renewal, salary advancement and advanced certification.

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to allow time for assigning user names, passwords and ordering/shipping the textbook.

Classes are TOTALLY ONLINE. You may participate from your home or school computer. Registration is limited to 20 participants per section.

Syllabus and other details:

http://www.uwstout.edu/soe/profdev/traits.shtml

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Fax: (715) 232-3385

Text Messaging & Conventions

ttyl, y? bcuz pos
Lost on my subject line?
Allow me to translate...

Talk to you later.
Why?
Because, parent over shoulder

(which means: my mom is staring at the computer screen so don't type anything that will get either of us in trouble)

My daughter doesn't realize I speak "text" (or txt, rather) - I like it that way...I keep tabs and she doesn't realize it. But that's not for this post. This post is about the idea of discussing "conventions" (and presentation, really) with your secondary students. Txt is a language of the young. It is a written language. It is shorthand and electronic. They live, eat, and breathe this language by cell, IM, and email 24/7. It is their native language - we will not break them of it - we must accept that. Obviously not all conventions or presentation problems are texting-based, but it does creep in - the lack of capitalization and punctuation is an acceptable convention of instant messaging and texting as the message box only allows 160 characters total. And capitalization requires several convoluted cell phone key punches. In addition, spelling is phonetic to eliminate excess letter characters and the time it takes to formulate a response. When a teen has 14 friends in a chat room - time of response is highly vital.

I don't write this to excuse the poor conventions of the Gen Wi-Fi writers, but I do want teachers to understand where their students live. Remember when you were listening to "your" music as a teenager and your parents told you it was awful and to turn it down? You simply rolled your eyes and thought they just had no idea what current life was really about...welcome to current life.

Rather than simply stating that it is unacceptable to turn in work with poor conventions - and editing away the texting habits of a generation - open up a discussion (especially with high school students) - about appropriate time and place for different kinds of writing. In the same way that we use a comma after the greeting in a friendly letter and a colon after the greeting in a business letter, the conventions for punctuation, spelling, etc., change for the digital environment one is in as well. See if students can arrive at examples like: An email to your teacher or boss *should* be clean of "txt", but an email or IM to your friend can be filled with it. Also, you might steer the discussion toward judgments potential employers, college admissions officers, etc., might make (first impressions) of the student, if all they had to go on was a piece of writing with misspellings, no capitalization, and no punctuation. If students can understand the authentic reasons for proofreading, editing, and revising, they will be more inclined to voluntarily do it themselves.

Your thoughts?

Lisa@hersoapbox
(Lisa Chamberlin, was taught about the traits by Vicki Spandel. She recently co-facilitated Teaching and Assessing Writing with the 6-Traits)

Organization: Where do you find the best leads?

Michael LaCerra: If you think about it, whenever a student read a novel, s/he has probably read a half-way decent lead about it---where? The back cover.

So, in helping students lead the reader into the body of their writing, I actually focus on reading. For part of the school year, students write their own leads for the independent reading they have finished. They put presentation touches on them, too, and then they go in a big 3-ring binder in my room where others can reference when looking for a book to read.

By using this process at the beginning of the year (with reading), I am usually able to quickly transfer these concepts over to writing instruction during Q2. Ongoing, students reinforce these skills by turning their leads into podcasts. Our school's server is being updated at the moment, so I cannot share an example--sorry.

In the end, students are learning effective writing strategies almost without even realizing it until we focus on it--kind of funny.

In teaching 8th graders, the far more challenging aspect is helping students improve their endings. So many of the strategies are the same as leads, but I have never been happy with my instruction or the students products. Any ideas? Thanks.

And lastly, I primarily focus on having my students use sophisticated transitions as opposed to "first, second, last". I have used this in the past for: VOICE, transitions, dialogue, and word choice.

http://mrbraiman.home.att.net/page13.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwyj78FpYt4

Start at the 35 sec mark...or have students re-inact it...just a thought.--mL

Ideas & Voice

Let me share Audrey's response to the following question: --"Wouldn't a piece that has well developed ideas usually contain voice?"


She helps us see the interactions and differences clearly:

I started wondering about this very same question as I was scoring "The Note".

My first thinking was that a piece with voice = 4 or 5 would also have a high score for ideas. Topic focus and selection of relevant, compelling, personal (experiential) details are shared by both voice and ideas.

But #1: Would it be possible to have a piece of writing where the author is very engaging and personal (Voice 4 or 5) but the ideas are just a string of wonderings grouped together, a broad range of topics (Ideas 3 or 2)?

But #2: Would it be possible to have a piece of writing where the the topic is narrow; the writer speaks from experience, giving quality details; and the reader's questions are anticipated and answered, (Ideas 4 or 5) yet the writing is sincere but impersonal and lacking risk (Voice 3)?

Perhaps a high score for Voice or Ideas would mean at least a 3 or 4 for the other trait of this pair?

What do you think?

Are there any examples you can think of?

I May Have Found My Voice

Maria reports from Summer School:

One thing I learned from the class readings, which was reinforced oddly enough in my summer school Kindergarten job today, is that the best way to engage students is to share your own writing with them. Show them your own struggles/process/evolution as a writer. Invite their input.

I tried it with Kindergarteners today, with phenomenal success.

As I relayed a description of my backyard, using simple drawings on a whiteboard and labeling the pictures, the students enthusiastically chimed in with suggestions of what to add ("How about a cat who wants to eat the goldfish in your pond?"); comments about their own backyards ("My dad built a waterfall in ours."); and helpful hints on spelling ("Sun" is spelled s-u-n.). Then, when I had the students develop their own stories in their journals, I found myself absorbed in the details of their lives. In the past, I have insisted that they write something first, then illustrate it. I learned today how unnatural that is for young writers. I also learned how much fun it is to hear other people's stories, even 6-year-olds!

Tomorrow, I am going to revisit the description of my backyard with my young charges. I am going to muse out loud about whether there is anything I could add to my story, either in the form of more pictures, or more words. Perhaps I will even venture to write a sentence about it. I will teach them, subtly, that you can go back to a piece anytime you want, planting the seeds of "revision". I will ask them to revisit their stories from yesterday, and decide if there is anything they wish to add.

(You may or may not recognize that I got the Kindergarten ideas from author Lucy Caulkins and her books on writer's workshop. Her work reinforces my conviction that sharing my writing with students is a sure way to prime their creative pump.)

Online Discussion: Vocabulary Lists & Word Choice

1 - Question - Terese
I am curious about how educators feel about vocabulary lists. Are they a necessary evil? I know I have introduced vocabulary lists to my first graders from their reading stories. We have learned to use dictionaries and thesauruses this way. The children are writing the definitions weekly and are tested. Of course, we do other activities with the words, but does defining them help retention? Are the tried and true vocab. lists and word choice activities such as we have read about best when combined to help students retain meaning and build vocabulary?

2 - Re: Question - Eryn
I think that vocabulary lists can be helpful. I also think its great that you are introducing them to dictionary's and the thesaurus. What a great skill to develop when you are young. Many kids get to the upper elementary grades and above and don't have any idea about using a dictionary. I also think its helpful for students to understand the meaning behind the words they are reading in their stories. It helps not only with reading comprehension but with writing too. Great question!~Eryn

3 - Re: Question - Terese
Thanks for your encouragement. My kids actually love doing it. I let them think they are doing third grade work and it makes them feel great.

4 - Re: Question - Shirley
My only question would be can the first graders understand the words in the dictionaries and thesauruses? If so, then you are teaching them to use these books instead of fear them!Shirley

5 - Re: Question - Terese
Yes, they can understand them. They are dictionaries and thesauruses made for young children, not the ones older children would be using. They definitely regard it as work that should be for much older children. I try to make them think that they are so smart that they can do it anyway. It works!

6 - Re: Question - Shirley
I love having the children think they are doing work that should be for older children too. Just yesterday I was teaching art and did a project with 1st graders that was designed for older children. I made sure they knew they were "extra talented!"

7 - Re: Question - Terese
That's one of the glories of teaching young children. It is so easy to make them feel special. I love it!

8 - Re: Question - Kathy
I personally have never in first grade used a vocabulary list. We stop and explore the meaning of words in our shared and guided stories by looking at synonyms and antonyms and definitions. I like the idea in the book about keeping a list of these new words that they learn so that they don't forget to use them. I don't know if we need to have them writing the definitions and being tested on them. Is that part of your curriculum?just a friendly opinion:)

9 - Re: Question - Terese
Yes, it is in our curriculum. My students actually love doing it and it is building their confidence.

10 - Re: Question - Jennifer
I think vocabulary lists and isolated word lists can be beneficial when our purpose is to open our students' eyes to word possibilities. However, we have got to make sure that we make explicit connections back to real-life, meaningful writing experiences.In my classroom, my first graders circle words that they think they will need to change the spelling of or use a different word or words during the act of writing. Then after they have done the really hard work of recording their message, they go back and fix those words. Jennifer

11 - Re: Question - Terese
I agree. I know my students remember their vocabulary words because they are connected to a reading story. I hear them saying things such as, "Oh, that was a vocabulary word" and they go searching through their vocabulary notebook. They use this as one more resource for both word choice and for spelling.

12 - Re: Question - Elizabeth
Here is my two cents from an ESL stand point : research has shown that a child needs to hear a word in context 50+ times before it is added to their internal vocabulary. Lists are not bad things - remember we all have different learning styles!

13 - Re: Question - Terese
Thanks for that reminder. You are so right.

14 - Re: Question - Mary Catherine Bolton ( Mar 1, 2007 5:28 PM )
Well, speaking for the OLDER kids (2nd grade:), we intro vocabulary before we begin reading their weekly story in their anthology. We orally define this vocab, read a "getting ready to start" page that introduces this same vocab, listen to the story, then the students have to use each vocab word in a sentence for homework that night. We review these words again when we read the story the next day, and the day after that they take home their anthologies to read the story to their parents. Kind of a traditional approach, but it seems to work in helping them get a feel for the words for reading comprehension. In addition to this, we have a word wall and individual word lists which we use when we come across interesting words.

15 - Re: Question - Mark
I have done extensive research into the area of spelling and vocabulary use. For my entire life I have struggled with spelling and word usage. And I was raised on word lists. I did this research to help me improve my own spelling, after all I teach English and spelling is somewhat important. Well, Based on this research I completely redesigned the focus of spelling and word use in my classroom.

Essentially, what I found was that in normal circumstances we all use a set amount of words, but we do not All use the same words in our writing. Variety in our message is achieved by rearranging these words. Because of this we all have words in our individual schema that overlap…it is these overlapped words that appear on lists of most commonly misspelled words along with other word groups such as modifiers and conjunctions.

This is so oversimplified but the long and the short of it was is that people will only use words they are comfortable with, unless they have to go out of that comfort zone. The further they go out of that zone, the more errors they will make. So, in my mind, the road to improved word use and spelling was to create a place where my kids would feel safe so that they could experiment with unfamiliar words.

Ahhh… You may say, didn't you say that if they leave this zone their misspellings increase?…Yes in fact I did. And that's what I want. I want them to increase their personal vocabulary and their accuracy in that set of words.

So instead of using lists, I find their vocabulary and spelling in their writing. For a number of reasons I find it easier, and more authentic for them. As part of their editing they need to identify misspellings in their papers, and most of the time it is the same words. Once identified, they choose ten words to work on. And working on them is simple. They write the word ten times in a system called old way – new way. Essentially, they spell the word incorrectly, then correctly next to it – close their eyes and spell it out loud and then write it into a sentence. They do that five times per word, and then their done. Until the next time they misspell another word.

I have been amazed at how much their spelling has improved within the context of their writing. I know this works because of the improvement I have seen in my own nemesis.

Uh… is this what you were talking about?

16 - Re: Question - Terese
I think your idea is great. I think I will try it or something similar. Thanks.

17 - Re: Question - Kathy
I agree with you. Our spelling instruction is built in to our writing curriculum. It is hard for teachers to pull away from lists. However, research shows that students tend to memorize the list for a test and not retain the information. I look for words in my students writing and then common misspelled words are added to our word wall. Individual words that are misspelled are added to personal dictionaries. I think this is so meaningful for students.

18 - Re: Question - Mark
Yes, we do personal dictionaries as well. I forgot to mention that in my first post. For me, the coolest thing is to see them go for the personal dictionary before going for the Webster which, my class has nick named the Onion. Long story...

19 - The Onion - Shirley
In this class we are talking about writing, so when you feel that need to practice your writing . . . we would love to read the long story about the "Onion"!Shirley