Serving Diverse Audiences

When the Indiana School for the Deaf Seeks Help to Improve Students' Writing Skills, It Discovers the 6+1 Trait™ Model. The Rest is History.

by Suzie Boss

Indianapolis, Indiana—As a veteran trainer with the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory's assessment program, Janice Wright has traveled the country to teach teachers how to use the 6+1 Trait™ Writing Assessment and Instruction Model. She's explained the model in big cities, small towns, classrooms, conference centers, just about everywhere—or so she thought.

This fall, Wright received an invitation to present a 6+1 Trait™ training session for teachers at the Indiana School for the Deaf (ISD). Wright recognized the opportunity to help make history. "This would be the first time we've introduced the model for use with deaf students," she explains. By coincidence, Wright also has experience in Deaf Education. She was a student teacher years ago at the Oregon School for the Deaf, and later was an itinerant teacher for deaf students in Central Oregon. She was excited by the chance to help adapt the model to meet the learning needs of this special population of students. "It seemed like a wonderful opportunity."

The Indiana School for the Deaf, a 320-student residential school, serves students from preschool through 12th grade. Teachers and students use American Sign Language.

Gary Mowl, chairperson for school improvement planning, explains that the school has been seeking to improve student performance in the area of language arts. When members of the language arts committee began exploring how other public schools in Indiana have made strides in improving student writing, they kept seeing references to something called the six traits. That made them curious. Through further investigation, they learned how the 6+1 Trait™ assessment model enables teachers to give students specific feedback about their writing. Guided by the traits, students become more confident writers, better equipped to reach for excellence.

Mowl's research led him to NWREL, which provides a wide variety of materials and training to support the use of the 6+1 Trait™ model. And he also found Wright. "It was by mere coincidence that Janice had background in Deaf Education," he explains. Together, they began mapping out a two-day workshop for ISD's language arts teachers.

Adapting the Model

Going into the workshop, Wright knew that she would have to rethink some aspects of the 6+1 Trait™ model. Deaf students, she explains, tend to be quite literal. "Things that play to the ear—word play—may not make sense to them." Children who are deaf or hard of hearing may not have large vocabularies. "Often, they didn't get read to as young children,"she explains, which means they may have missed opportunities to build their vocabulary and other literacy skills. From experience, Wright also appreciated the importance of using visual models rather than auditory examples in the workshops.

Perhaps most important, she understood that deaf students share many of the characteristics of English language learners. At the Indiana School for the Deaf, "they teach the students using their first language, American Sign Language," Wright explains. Rather than being a signed version of English, ASL has its own constructs and patterns. "It's grammatically different from English. Deafness is a culture, not a disability. Deaf kids are ELL kids. That's really important."

NWREL has a track record of adapting the 6+1 Trait™ model to fit the needs of English language learners. Native Spanish speakers, in particular, have been served by an adaptation of the traits for effective Spanish writing. Wright borrowed from this research base, which supports teaching students to write well in their native language first, then take those skills into writing in English.

Because the workshop would be a pilot project, Wright asked Mowl and his colleagues to be patient. "This involved a lot of learning for me," Wright admits, "and they were willing to work with me to help me change and adapt the model so that it will work for them and their students."

Positive Response

When it was time for the two-day workshop, Wright found herself in front of an audience of about 20 teachers, plus two interpreters. "They had to remind me to talk more slowly, and to really slow down when reading aloud," she says. There was plenty of give-and-take, as well, with Wright asking the teachers for input about how the model could be modified to better suit their students' needs. Overall, she adds, "it was a wonderful experience."

Mowl says teacher response was "superb." Teachers were enthusiastic about the concepts, the materials, the videos, and Wright's presentations. Many have already started using the traits in their classrooms.

Carol Keller, a middle school language arts teacher, said after the session: "The ideas in the notebook were wonderful and very helpful. It will be beneficial for both the teachers and students to learn and work on these traits one by one. Our students have always been weak on peer tutoring, and this will give them a good base for assessing themselves and others." In the past, she says, she has had to skip over peer review during the writing process. "Now, I'm hoping to incorporate this skill in my lessons."

Sharon Baker, a high school language arts teacher, began introducing the traits to her students right after the training session. She says: "Using the traits in class has shown to be quite useful and beneficial for me, as well as my students. It lessens the burden of checking for every single problem within their writing. Now we can focus on one or two areas at a time, and it is a little less overwhelming. Students are not getting a paper that is full of red circles because they know we are working on one specific area at a time."

As part of her visit to Indiana, Wright also conducted an evening workshop to explain the 6+1 Trait™ model to parents. Mary Dall is a mother of three children, two hearing and one deaf. She explains why she found the session so useful: "My older hearing children always had some kind of rubric tool to measure their writings. They always seemed to do just fine. It was not until I attended the workshop on the 6+1 Traits™ that I had a better understanding of what rubric systems are all about! This workshop has actually opened my eyes in terms of how to review my son's writings. For my son and me, English is our second language. Ah, I am much, much older than he is and have had plenty of practice. I was never too sure how to go about looking at my son's writing and how to go about 'correcting' his grammar. This tool has given me a very, very nice way to approach him in our discussion. No longer do I really have to focus on his grammar, which I know will develop over time. This workshop has taught me other areas of more importance to discuss."

Lessons That Last

Such positive responses resonate with Wright, who remembers her own introduction to the traits a decade ago. She was teaching in a small school district when Oregon adopted the model for statewide writing assessment. Wright was called on to revise the language arts curriculum and thought to herself, "Here we go again..."

But far from being a passing fad, the 6+1 Trait™ model offered her lasting insights into how children learn to write. "I taught myself to use the traits, and they changed the way I started teaching. I saw wonderful results for my kids," she recalls. "The key was respecting kids as writers, giving responsibility back to them. If the teacher stops being the kids' editor, they will take on that responsibility for themselves. I also began to see the value of encouraging them to write for an audience, for a purpose, for their own reasons."

Before long, Wright had transformed her teaching style. "We turned my class into a writing community. We were all doing publishing—students and teacher alike. And we were all respecting each other as writers." The 6+1 Trait™ model offered students a common vocabulary for giving one another helpful feedback, she says, "so we could build on our strengths."

Wright's early experience in Deaf Education also shaped her classroom style. "You have to break it down into steps, chunk it out. You can't assume deaf students know what you mean," she says, "when you talk about conventions or word choice or conclusion. You have to explain the concept, give a mini-lesson so you're sure they understand." Looking back, Wright can see how "being a teacher of deaf kids made me a better teacher of hearing kids, too."

Now, when she's training other teachers to use the 6+1 Trait™ model, Wright often draws on her own classroom experiences. "You don't hand a paper back to a student and say: 'Revise this.' You might say: 'Let's look at how often you used this word. Is there another word you could substitute?' Or: 'Let's took a look at the lead paragraph. How could you bring the reader in better?' Once you finish, it's going to be so much stronger."

When she sees teachers getting excited about using the model to inform their instruction, Wright also knows that big changes may be in store for them. "It causes you to examine how you teach. You may wind up asking yourself, 'Do I teach this way because it's how I've always taught writing, or is this really the best way for kids?'"