A Writing Program That Scores With the 6-Trait Model by Lynne Shapiro

The message that I got from this article is that when give the correct methods and information, teachers and students can be successful in the classroom. When writers of all grades know what parts of writing they will be assessed on, they are able to write in a more focused way. The 6-trait writing model allows authors of all grade levels to write creative and vivid work with an appropriate voice as well as provides teachers with an assessment that help them plan for instruction. Implementing this 6-trait model approach is useful not only because it offers consistency from classroom to classroom but also gives more insight into the specific author’s strengths and weaknesses. By identifying a level in each of the 6 traits, educators then know where they need to help individual students as well as what strategies the students are struggling with as a class. When students are made aware of these 6 traits, they can then make connections to the components while reading, making them able to carry strong conversations and begin to read like writers.

I found this approach to writing very interesting and I think I will try to use it in my second grade classroom. Although our second graders participate in writers workshop everyday, I feel that it lacks structure. Many of the students hurry through their work so that they can begin to draw a picture. I really liked that this 6-trait model gave teachers a clear assessment to base their instruction off of. My students are writing small moment stories and have been for a couple of weeks but they are bored with the topic as they are not given much directions. I like that this model shows the teacher what to discuss with the students according to where they are in the writing process.For example, we are currently in the revising stage of the writing process but what this means has not been discussed other than to tell the children to reread their stories and add detail. I would love to start fresh next week by having a lesson on prewriting and talking about the purpose of writing and audience. I really liked how Ms. Rothman used visualization as a way for the class to close their eyes and think about their writing and I think that would work very well in my second grade class. There hasn’t been a discussion as to why we write in our class yet and the lack of enthusiasm during writers workshop tells me that this may need to happen soon. I could see the overlapping with our language arts program pretty easily. Each week we spend time on a specific area of word study and I think the students should be challenged to try and incorporate this into their writing. We are working with singular and plural nouns and I think it would interesting for them to identify these in their own writing. During our read aloud time, we often talk about book language but fall short when it comes to using language of the traits of writing. We could easily talk about words that make verbs stronger and which words act as transitions in a story. I think that breaking down the process trait by trait is something that would be very easily done in our classroom by having writers workshop be more than independent writing. I believe that if we start each workshop with a mini-lesson on a trait, the students will begin to develop their writing in a more thoughtful way.

In order to become successful with this approach, I need to more aware of what the students are writing. In our room, the students work on a piece that is kept in each tables writers workshop bin, which is stored under a table in the back. I was really impressed when watching Ms. Rothman’s video as she frequently took the children’s work home with her to read over and make personalized suggestions and comments. I feel that this would be beneficial to my class because I believe that many of them do not see the point of writing. If they know that I will be reading them, it may help them have a sense of audience and purpose. I would like to have a file with a copy of what the student is writing each week so that I can see their strengths, weaknesses and hopefully their improvements. Each week they write in a homework journal at home and then turn it in on Friday. So far, I have been checking to see if they write at least four sentences on the specific questions, but I think that I could easily incorporate some of the trait language into this journal. The idea of reading strong and weak pieces of writing for assessment practice or revision is something I would also love to exercise in the classroom so I would need to start looking through books and trying to find examples of this. If I could find examples that also incorporate that week’s word study that would be even better.

I think this module helped me to see that before planning a unit, you have to be very conscious of what your objective is. I also think it’s important for the students to know what the goal is whether it is for the day, week or month. I’m sensing a lack of purpose in my classroom and I’m wondering if it is because the students don’t always see the usefulness or importance of the subject. Just as students are stronger in some traits of writing than others, they may have strengths and weaknesses when it comes to test taking and for that reason I think that assessment techniques should be varied. I know that many of my students are visual learners or like to participate in hands on activities so I will try to make my assessments using graphic organizers and hold discussions based on participation. In looking at my two samples of writing from the class, I notice that there are several papers that I had to come back to many times before understanding what was trying to be said. This tells me that the student was thinking about the subject but having trouble writing their thoughts, so i know that I need to 1. talk to this person to orally assess their comprehension and 2. then go back to their writing and see if I can see what they were trying to say and use that to improve their writing.