Mrs. Weber's Individual Writing Centers
Writing Platform
I believe in the 6+1 TRAIT model when it comes to teaching handwriting. The six traits are ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation. These traits allow both the reader and writer to note strengths and weaknesses in the work as it moves through the writing process.
IDEAS: When it comes to ideas, students struggle because writing is complex, students think faster than they can write, and students don't write for themselves. We need to teach our students that writing is always better when it is written for the writer, not for the teacher or even the reader. As teachers, it's important to back off when students do something different, challenge a topic, we must know when to encourage, when to teach, and when it's time to back off and let the students be.
There are four key pieces to working with the ideas trait that every student can learn:
1. Selecting a topic (topic)
2. Narrowing the idea (focus)
3. Elaborating on the idea (development)
4. Discovering the best information to convey the idea (details)
Activities to help students select an idea:
------> Making old ideas new: read the book The Secret Knowledge of Grown-Ups by David Wisniewski and have students choose their own rule they've hear their parent say and make up their own truth behind that rule.
------>Free their ideas: Free writing, flashbacks, and favorite places
------> Corral Ideas: Students keep a journal of idea that intrigue them, issues that cause them to question things, and observations they make that fascinates them.
Activities to help a student narrow an idea:
------> R.A.F.T.S.
R- role of the writer
A- audience for the piece of writing
F- format of the material
T- topic or subject of the piece of writing
S- strong verb
Example:
Role: kidney
Audience: your host/body
Format: letter
Topic: What you need to stay healthy; why your host would be better off
S: explaining
You are a kidney in the human body. Write a letter to your host to explain what you need to stay healthy and why the host would be better off if you ARE and STAY in tip-top condition.
-------> Call It Out: Pick a category such as "animals". Call out questions and encourage students to chime in with different answers. Record some of the narrowed topics on the board and let students do a quick write, about five minutes long, one one of them.
-------> Picture This: put up a picture of a piece of artwork and have students write down and describe what they see, then cover up 5/6 of the picture and then have students describe what they see.
Activities to help students elaborate of an idea:
--------> Ask me a Question: Divide students into groups of three. Each student tells their group a short story of a memorable event that happened to him or her. The listeners may not chime in during or after the story, instead they must write three questions they have for the storyteller. This helps the storyteller to see where they need to elaborate.
--------> Building Blocks: Tell students you are going to provide them with a set of building blocks and write on the board: When, Size, Name a Place, and Add a Name. Then give students a simple sentence and have them use these building blocks to add to their sentence.
Example: simple sentence- The dog howled.
When- Last night, the dog howled.
Size- Last night, the enormous dog howled.
Name a Place- Last night, the enormous dog howled outside my window.
Add a Name- Last night, the neighbor's enormous dog howled outside my window.
Activities to help students discover details:
------> Pick the Postcard: Give each student a postcard and ask them to write a paragraph about the image on their postcard. Once students finish, collect the postcards and tape them up on the whiteboard. Have students come up and read their paragraph and see if their classmates can guess their card based on the details they gave.
ORGANIZATION: When it comes to organization students seem to struggle with this trait because rigid organization is often overvalued, organization is truly hard, and we're looking for the one-size fits all program. When it comes to teaching organization, we should focus on writing the introduction, developing the middle of the paper, and writing the conclusion.
Activities to Help Students Write Introduction:
-------> Share students leads: students share just the leads from their works and once everyone has read, brainstorm a list of different techniques to begin writing.
Example of list to begin a piece of writing:
- A thought-provoking question to make the reader wonder
- A little "sip" of the conclusion to get the reader's attention and pique his or her interest
- A funny story or personal anecdote to set a humorous or individual tone
- A list of main points to introduce the topic in a serious, logical, and straightforward manner
- A dramatic, sweeping, or eye-opening statement
- An expert quotation to establish credibility
- The student's own angle-one that readers have never seen before
-------> Share examples from literature: Share short excerpts from a variety of different sources so students can see how professional writers choose to begin their work.
Activities to Help Students Write the Middle of Papers:
--------> Teach Organizational Options: Organize by Space, Organize by Time, Organize by Content, and Organize by Perspective
--------> Teach Transitions: To show locations (above, beneath, beyond), to compare and contrast (similarly, however, even so), to show time (first, second, soon, after a while), to conclude and summarize (finally, to sum up, to clarify), to add information (besides, in addition, furthermore)
-------> Step by Step: This activity teaches sequencing. Have students write directions for an activity such as making a peanut butter sandwich. Have classmates follow the directions to the written directions with all the fixings. This activity builds an understanding of the importance of order in making your point clear and also creates a lot of drafts.
Activities that Help Students Write Conclusions:
-------> Look to Authors: Show students a variety of techniques authors use to conclude their pieces. Some examples are:
Profound Thoughts
Surprise
Quote
Tie-Up
Question or Open-Ended Statement
Challenge
Summary
Literary Device
Laugh
VOICE:
Voice is the sense that a real person is speaking to you and cares about the message. In my opinion, voice is the most difficult trait to teach children because it isn't as concrete as the other traits.
One of the best ways to teach voice is by examining the works of published authors.
A great way to help children with voice is to create a class list of voice descriptors.
Here is an example:
happy, warm, caring, superficial, ridiculous, sarcastic, way out there, scholarly, bereaved, thoughtful, funny, profound, pleasing, flat, thrilled, mean, courageous, subtle, curt, rude, tentative, passionate, and more.
A couple activities I love to teach voice are Voice Out, Voice In. Give students manuals or textbooks and have students work individually or in pairs for this activity. With the manual or textbook, have students rewrite the piece trying to put as much voice in as possible. Read the revisions aloud to appreciate the contrast.
New Voices, New Choices: Have students write the first sentence of a letter to five different audiences. Discuss how the voice in the writing will change depending on the intended audience.
Shopping List: Just for sheer fun have students turn a simple grocery list into a voice-rich writing task.
1. coffee
2. margarine
3. cookies
4. hamburger
5. paper towels
Word Choice:
Word choice is about beautiful language. It is about the use of rich, colorful, precise language that communicates not just in a functional way, but also in a way that moves and enlightens the reader.
My favorite activity to do with students for this writing trait is called the more detail, the better. How this activity works is all students will study the same object to see how can observe the most detail. The book says try to use a lively subject for this activity (I used my sugar glider). Give the students one minute to study the subject for one minute, then put the subject away and have them write for a minute all the details they can remember. Do this several times and then make a class list of details of the subject.
Some of my favorite responses when a student of mine uses word choice well, I would tell him or her things like:
-Your words paint a picture!
-I can picture this!
-_________________-what a perfect word for this image!
-Many great action verbs.
Another great activity to help students with connotations would be to have them choose a familiar place, such as the school gym, the lunchroom, the hall lockers, the mall, the park, etc. Then have them write two paragraphs: one from the point of view of someone who loves this place, the other from someone who hates it. By using words with good connotations and words with bad connotations, students are learning how important word choice is when writing from different views.
When students understand word choice they are able to write clearly, powerfully, and beautifully. To help students with their word choice we should be exposing them to the best written prose and poetry, filling their heads with images so real that they feel like they can reach out and touch them.
Sentence Fluency:
Sentence fluency is an auditory trait, as in we read it for our ears as much as our eyes. To capture what the writer has in mind, sentences much contain the right phrase or word in just the right place to create just the right image. To define sentence fluency, we would say fluent writing is graceful, varied, rhythmic-almost musical. Sentences are well built, they move, they are varied in structure and length, and each one seems to flow right out of the one before.
When responding to students who used sentence fluency well in their paper, I would say things such as:
-Your sentences begin in interesting and different ways!
-Your creative use of sentences helped me read and enjoy!
-Your transitions helped move the reader from passage to passage.
-Your piece reads smoothly.
Some of my favorite activities to help students with their sentence fluency would be:
-Sentence Stretching: This is an activity where each student comes up with a simple sentence on their own piece of paper. Then explain to the class that they are going to pass their paper to their right and their neighbor must add one word or change one word to make the sentence more specific and interesting. The paper will be passed around 6 times and then returned to it's original owner and then have each student come up and read their stretched sentence.
-Sentence or Fragments Bee: This activity helps students develop an ear for the difference between a sentence and a fragment. Line students up and ask the student at the front of the line: Is this a fragment or a sentence? If they get it right they go back to the end of the line and if they get it wrong, they go to their seat. Last student standing is the winner.
-Which is better?- In this activity students will develop an ear for the flow of sentences and how the flow can enhance the meaning. Share two versions of a piece of writing. Students will have to say which they prefer and why. You may have to share a number of examples before students begin to hear the difference. When sharing the two pieces, one should be short and choppy sentences and the other should be one continuous sentence.
FOR EXAMPLE:
We went to the beach. It was sunny. It was warm. We had fun. We flew kites and ate hot dogs.
We spent a warm, sunny day at the beach eating snacks and flying kites.
Conventions:
The purpose of conventions are to help guide the reader through the text and make ideas readable. The first five traits allow us to create the text, but this trait is different because now we are editing the text and preparing it for the reader. The trait makes the text understandable in a uniform way.
When one of my students uses his or her conventions well, I would say things like:
-Your punctuation supports the voice of the piece.
-Nice work with apostrophes. They can be tricky.
-You're a great editor!
-Very clearly written. Nice control over grammar and usage.
Some of my favorite activities for teaching students conventions are:
-Take it Out: This activity has the teacher rewrite a short story by omitting all punctuation, capitalization, and indentation. Group students with copies of the story and ask them to put all the conventions back in. Or another way would be to put the passage over the elmo and find all the missing conventions as a class. You could tell the students there are 10 mistakes and have a countdown as they find mistakes. ***make sure that the passage is short for young students so they don't get overwhelmed by the length
-An activity to help students with their spelling is called Practice Makes Perfect: Pick a problem spelling word, or have students pick one. Throughout the day, ask students to spell it before they can do things such as turn in a paper, go to the bathroom, get a drink, ask a question, or talk to a neighbor. Practice, practice, practice for accurate spelling of high-frequency words.
-To help students with their grammar, videos such as Schoolhouse Rock and Grammaropolis are great videos to teach parts of speech.
Presentation:
Presentation is the final piece of the 6+1 TRAIT puzzle. This trait is defined as how the writing looks to the reader. When students are ready to publish their work they should be checking for:
-uniform spacing
-legible and consistent handwriting, or appropriate use of fonts and sizes
-appealing use of white space
-where necessary, bullets, numbers, side headings, and other markers that help the reader access content
-Effective integration of text and illustration, charts, graphs, maps, and tables
My students use a CHIMPS checklist before they can publish their work and it stands for:
C-capitalization
H-handwriting
I-indents
M-makes sense
P-punctuation
S-spelling
As students turn in their own finished pieces, I want to make sure I tell them what area of presentation they did well in, so I would say things such as:
-Your handwriting is neat and legible. Thanks!
-This table really supported your text!
-The font your chose is clear and adds to the ease of reading.
-Good use of white space and margins to showcase your writing!
IDEAS: When it comes to ideas, students struggle because writing is complex, students think faster than they can write, and students don't write for themselves. We need to teach our students that writing is always better when it is written for the writer, not for the teacher or even the reader. As teachers, it's important to back off when students do something different, challenge a topic, we must know when to encourage, when to teach, and when it's time to back off and let the students be.
There are four key pieces to working with the ideas trait that every student can learn:
1. Selecting a topic (topic)
2. Narrowing the idea (focus)
3. Elaborating on the idea (development)
4. Discovering the best information to convey the idea (details)
Activities to help students select an idea:
------> Making old ideas new: read the book The Secret Knowledge of Grown-Ups by David Wisniewski and have students choose their own rule they've hear their parent say and make up their own truth behind that rule.
------>Free their ideas: Free writing, flashbacks, and favorite places
------> Corral Ideas: Students keep a journal of idea that intrigue them, issues that cause them to question things, and observations they make that fascinates them.
Activities to help a student narrow an idea:
------> R.A.F.T.S.
R- role of the writer
A- audience for the piece of writing
F- format of the material
T- topic or subject of the piece of writing
S- strong verb
Example:
Role: kidney
Audience: your host/body
Format: letter
Topic: What you need to stay healthy; why your host would be better off
S: explaining
You are a kidney in the human body. Write a letter to your host to explain what you need to stay healthy and why the host would be better off if you ARE and STAY in tip-top condition.
-------> Call It Out: Pick a category such as "animals". Call out questions and encourage students to chime in with different answers. Record some of the narrowed topics on the board and let students do a quick write, about five minutes long, one one of them.
-------> Picture This: put up a picture of a piece of artwork and have students write down and describe what they see, then cover up 5/6 of the picture and then have students describe what they see.
Activities to help students elaborate of an idea:
--------> Ask me a Question: Divide students into groups of three. Each student tells their group a short story of a memorable event that happened to him or her. The listeners may not chime in during or after the story, instead they must write three questions they have for the storyteller. This helps the storyteller to see where they need to elaborate.
--------> Building Blocks: Tell students you are going to provide them with a set of building blocks and write on the board: When, Size, Name a Place, and Add a Name. Then give students a simple sentence and have them use these building blocks to add to their sentence.
Example: simple sentence- The dog howled.
When- Last night, the dog howled.
Size- Last night, the enormous dog howled.
Name a Place- Last night, the enormous dog howled outside my window.
Add a Name- Last night, the neighbor's enormous dog howled outside my window.
Activities to help students discover details:
------> Pick the Postcard: Give each student a postcard and ask them to write a paragraph about the image on their postcard. Once students finish, collect the postcards and tape them up on the whiteboard. Have students come up and read their paragraph and see if their classmates can guess their card based on the details they gave.
ORGANIZATION: When it comes to organization students seem to struggle with this trait because rigid organization is often overvalued, organization is truly hard, and we're looking for the one-size fits all program. When it comes to teaching organization, we should focus on writing the introduction, developing the middle of the paper, and writing the conclusion.
Activities to Help Students Write Introduction:
-------> Share students leads: students share just the leads from their works and once everyone has read, brainstorm a list of different techniques to begin writing.
Example of list to begin a piece of writing:
- A thought-provoking question to make the reader wonder
- A little "sip" of the conclusion to get the reader's attention and pique his or her interest
- A funny story or personal anecdote to set a humorous or individual tone
- A list of main points to introduce the topic in a serious, logical, and straightforward manner
- A dramatic, sweeping, or eye-opening statement
- An expert quotation to establish credibility
- The student's own angle-one that readers have never seen before
-------> Share examples from literature: Share short excerpts from a variety of different sources so students can see how professional writers choose to begin their work.
Activities to Help Students Write the Middle of Papers:
--------> Teach Organizational Options: Organize by Space, Organize by Time, Organize by Content, and Organize by Perspective
--------> Teach Transitions: To show locations (above, beneath, beyond), to compare and contrast (similarly, however, even so), to show time (first, second, soon, after a while), to conclude and summarize (finally, to sum up, to clarify), to add information (besides, in addition, furthermore)
-------> Step by Step: This activity teaches sequencing. Have students write directions for an activity such as making a peanut butter sandwich. Have classmates follow the directions to the written directions with all the fixings. This activity builds an understanding of the importance of order in making your point clear and also creates a lot of drafts.
Activities that Help Students Write Conclusions:
-------> Look to Authors: Show students a variety of techniques authors use to conclude their pieces. Some examples are:
Profound Thoughts
Surprise
Quote
Tie-Up
Question or Open-Ended Statement
Challenge
Summary
Literary Device
Laugh
VOICE:
Voice is the sense that a real person is speaking to you and cares about the message. In my opinion, voice is the most difficult trait to teach children because it isn't as concrete as the other traits.
One of the best ways to teach voice is by examining the works of published authors.
A great way to help children with voice is to create a class list of voice descriptors.
Here is an example:
happy, warm, caring, superficial, ridiculous, sarcastic, way out there, scholarly, bereaved, thoughtful, funny, profound, pleasing, flat, thrilled, mean, courageous, subtle, curt, rude, tentative, passionate, and more.
A couple activities I love to teach voice are Voice Out, Voice In. Give students manuals or textbooks and have students work individually or in pairs for this activity. With the manual or textbook, have students rewrite the piece trying to put as much voice in as possible. Read the revisions aloud to appreciate the contrast.
New Voices, New Choices: Have students write the first sentence of a letter to five different audiences. Discuss how the voice in the writing will change depending on the intended audience.
Shopping List: Just for sheer fun have students turn a simple grocery list into a voice-rich writing task.
1. coffee
2. margarine
3. cookies
4. hamburger
5. paper towels
Word Choice:
Word choice is about beautiful language. It is about the use of rich, colorful, precise language that communicates not just in a functional way, but also in a way that moves and enlightens the reader.
My favorite activity to do with students for this writing trait is called the more detail, the better. How this activity works is all students will study the same object to see how can observe the most detail. The book says try to use a lively subject for this activity (I used my sugar glider). Give the students one minute to study the subject for one minute, then put the subject away and have them write for a minute all the details they can remember. Do this several times and then make a class list of details of the subject.
Some of my favorite responses when a student of mine uses word choice well, I would tell him or her things like:
-Your words paint a picture!
-I can picture this!
-_________________-what a perfect word for this image!
-Many great action verbs.
Another great activity to help students with connotations would be to have them choose a familiar place, such as the school gym, the lunchroom, the hall lockers, the mall, the park, etc. Then have them write two paragraphs: one from the point of view of someone who loves this place, the other from someone who hates it. By using words with good connotations and words with bad connotations, students are learning how important word choice is when writing from different views.
When students understand word choice they are able to write clearly, powerfully, and beautifully. To help students with their word choice we should be exposing them to the best written prose and poetry, filling their heads with images so real that they feel like they can reach out and touch them.
Sentence Fluency:
Sentence fluency is an auditory trait, as in we read it for our ears as much as our eyes. To capture what the writer has in mind, sentences much contain the right phrase or word in just the right place to create just the right image. To define sentence fluency, we would say fluent writing is graceful, varied, rhythmic-almost musical. Sentences are well built, they move, they are varied in structure and length, and each one seems to flow right out of the one before.
When responding to students who used sentence fluency well in their paper, I would say things such as:
-Your sentences begin in interesting and different ways!
-Your creative use of sentences helped me read and enjoy!
-Your transitions helped move the reader from passage to passage.
-Your piece reads smoothly.
Some of my favorite activities to help students with their sentence fluency would be:
-Sentence Stretching: This is an activity where each student comes up with a simple sentence on their own piece of paper. Then explain to the class that they are going to pass their paper to their right and their neighbor must add one word or change one word to make the sentence more specific and interesting. The paper will be passed around 6 times and then returned to it's original owner and then have each student come up and read their stretched sentence.
-Sentence or Fragments Bee: This activity helps students develop an ear for the difference between a sentence and a fragment. Line students up and ask the student at the front of the line: Is this a fragment or a sentence? If they get it right they go back to the end of the line and if they get it wrong, they go to their seat. Last student standing is the winner.
-Which is better?- In this activity students will develop an ear for the flow of sentences and how the flow can enhance the meaning. Share two versions of a piece of writing. Students will have to say which they prefer and why. You may have to share a number of examples before students begin to hear the difference. When sharing the two pieces, one should be short and choppy sentences and the other should be one continuous sentence.
FOR EXAMPLE:
We went to the beach. It was sunny. It was warm. We had fun. We flew kites and ate hot dogs.
We spent a warm, sunny day at the beach eating snacks and flying kites.
Conventions:
The purpose of conventions are to help guide the reader through the text and make ideas readable. The first five traits allow us to create the text, but this trait is different because now we are editing the text and preparing it for the reader. The trait makes the text understandable in a uniform way.
When one of my students uses his or her conventions well, I would say things like:
-Your punctuation supports the voice of the piece.
-Nice work with apostrophes. They can be tricky.
-You're a great editor!
-Very clearly written. Nice control over grammar and usage.
Some of my favorite activities for teaching students conventions are:
-Take it Out: This activity has the teacher rewrite a short story by omitting all punctuation, capitalization, and indentation. Group students with copies of the story and ask them to put all the conventions back in. Or another way would be to put the passage over the elmo and find all the missing conventions as a class. You could tell the students there are 10 mistakes and have a countdown as they find mistakes. ***make sure that the passage is short for young students so they don't get overwhelmed by the length
-An activity to help students with their spelling is called Practice Makes Perfect: Pick a problem spelling word, or have students pick one. Throughout the day, ask students to spell it before they can do things such as turn in a paper, go to the bathroom, get a drink, ask a question, or talk to a neighbor. Practice, practice, practice for accurate spelling of high-frequency words.
-To help students with their grammar, videos such as Schoolhouse Rock and Grammaropolis are great videos to teach parts of speech.
Presentation:
Presentation is the final piece of the 6+1 TRAIT puzzle. This trait is defined as how the writing looks to the reader. When students are ready to publish their work they should be checking for:
-uniform spacing
-legible and consistent handwriting, or appropriate use of fonts and sizes
-appealing use of white space
-where necessary, bullets, numbers, side headings, and other markers that help the reader access content
-Effective integration of text and illustration, charts, graphs, maps, and tables
My students use a CHIMPS checklist before they can publish their work and it stands for:
C-capitalization
H-handwriting
I-indents
M-makes sense
P-punctuation
S-spelling
As students turn in their own finished pieces, I want to make sure I tell them what area of presentation they did well in, so I would say things such as:
-Your handwriting is neat and legible. Thanks!
-This table really supported your text!
-The font your chose is clear and adds to the ease of reading.
-Good use of white space and margins to showcase your writing!