Six Traits Writing

Six traits writing (or 6+1 Traits) works well for homeschoolers to guide and evaluate writing.

What is 6+1 Traits Writing? Until recently known as Six Traits Writing

The Northwest Regional Education Laboratory has a national agenda to promote the six traits (with the last one added recently to make seven) of excellent writing. These six traits were identified as the qualities of good writing and are useful to homeschoolers as well as other students. These traits are:

• Ideas
• Organization
• Voice
• Word choice
• Sentence fluency
• Conventions
• Presentation

The Value of Six Traits for Homeschoolers

Grading average writing assignments or correcting substandard writing can be a chore. As a writing tutor, I had no trouble giving tips to improve good writing; but it was difficult to know where to start with inadequate writing. The Six Traits are a great tool. They provide the student with specific goals.

How Does It Work? Here's how the Six Traits Writing can work for your program:

• Your student turns in his or her writing.
• Read it for each of the seven traits listed above.
• Evaluate how well the student's writing succeeded in each of the areas.
• Identify for the student specific examples of strengths and weaknesses in each.
• Optional: Have the student re-write and re-submit the paper to make one (or perhaps two) traits better.
• Consider assigning your next writing lesson specifically to strengthen a weak area.

6+1 Trait Writing works very well with Write On used by homeschoolers and many other writing curriculums used by homeschoolers.

Many of the activities in Write On are geared specifically to stretching the student's ability to use one trait. However, all the traits can be used with any written assignment.

After the student completes a writing lesson, score his or her work using a writing rubric based on the six traits writing. In the rubric give the student specific examples of how one of the six traits might be improved.

Focus on one (or possible two) of the six traits. Explain that trait. Look for examples of that trait in the student's reading materials. Consider having the student revise the last written work as the next writing assignment in order to improve that trait.

Choose a writing activity that will allow the student to focus specifically on that trait. After three or four lessons dedicated to that trait, students themselves will see the progress in their own writing.

WRITE ON: The Kid Friendly, Mother-Pleasing, Gentle Way to Learn To Write Watch your students writing take off. Guaranteed.



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