Products to Guide the Writing Process
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The 6+1 Trait™ Writing Assessment and Instruction Model has spawned a small industry at the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory. While the inhouse writing-trait gurus haven't added a night shift, they do stay busy conceiving and crafting the 6+1™ Trait resources teachers need and demand: everything from customized sticky notes to training videos to an assessment model for Spanish writing. More than 40 such items are now available.
The latest product out the door is Ruth Culham's 6+1 Traits of Writing: The Complete Guide, published by Scholastic, which bills it as "everything you need to teach and assess student writing with this powerful model." The Complete Guide includes writing samples, scoring rubrics, student guides, and hundreds of lessons and activities for grades three through 12.
"Scholastic wanted this book because publishers see how widespread the use of the traits is, from classrooms in every state, to the influence of the traits on state assessment," says Culham, unit manager for NWREL's Assessment Program.
Filled with real-life examples and anecdotes, The Complete Guide is written in a personable, lively style reflecting Culham's infectious enthusiasm about good writing. An easy-to-read, practical format and children's drawings about the traits complement the accessible prose.
Before diving into the traits in detail, Culham relates how they grew out of teachers' need to define the elements of good writing. Through comparing and discussing countless student papers, these teachers arrived at the six traits, which have been gradually refined over the years. Culham also reviews research studies which show that writing improves —at the classroom, school, and district levels—when students learn how to assess their own writing using the traits.
The guide's second chapter explores the link between the traits and the writing process—prewriting, drafting, sharing, revising, editing, and publishing. Subsequent chapters focus on each of the traits: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation. Each chapter defines a trait, reviews problems and highlights of the trait, provides assessment practice, and explores why each sample paper is scored as it is.
For each trait, the book provides numerous teaching activities as well as suggestions for adapting the activities to different grade levels. If, for instance, a teacher finds her students need to work on the trait of "organization," she'll find help in lessons on writing leads, making smooth transitions, sequencing main points logically, pacing the presentation, and closing with a satisfying conclusion.
Scheduled for release in December 2002, the 304-page paperback is part of Scholastic's Theory and Practice line of books, devoted to current trends in education. Culham anticipates it will be used for staff development sessions, by practicing teachers, and in college classes. She has agreed to write another book for Scholastic using the same format and focusing on the primary grades.
Teachers of young writers, however, need not put the traits on hold until such time as Culham puts pen to paper again. Seeing With New Eyes: A Guidebook on Teaching and Assessing Beginning Writers brims over with tips for using the traits in the primary classroom.
New Eyes traces the development of children's writing, beginning with scribbles and dictation, through experimentation with letters, to multiple sentences and an expanding vocabulary. We see that the writing traits manifest themselves in students' earliest writing efforts, and even in pictures. Are students putting a title at the top of the page or filling a page with text or pictures in a visually balanced way? Those are signs of a sense of organization. Do students know that English and Spanish prose usually moves from left to right and that people usually read from the top to the bottom of the page? Does a student enthusiastically place a period after almost every word in his writing? Such knowledge and practices show an awareness of conventions.
New Eyes discusses how the writing process works at the primary level, how to teach the traits to beginning writers, and how to use reading to teach writing. An entire chapter is devoted to answering teachers' frequently asked questions such as, "Do students need to write every day?" and, "How do I know when students are successful?" A companion video of the same name shows young students at work in classrooms where teachers use the techniques presented in the book.
For older as well as younger students, using picture books in the classroom can bring the writing traits to life. That's the premise of Picture Books: An Annotated Bibliography With Activities for Teaching Writing by Ruth Culham. The bibliography describes more than 200 first-rate children's books, grouping them by the trait they illuminate best. For example, for illustrations of strong sentence fluency, teachers might turn to The Table Where Rich People Sit by Byrd Baylor, Slugs by David Greenberg, The Great Migration by Jacob Lawrence, or River Dream by Allan Say.
Following the bibliography, more than 50 teacher-written lessons and activities, also grouped by trait, suggest ways to integrate the traits and the books into writing instruction at all grade levels. A related NWREL product—the training video Picture This: Using Picture Books in Middle and High School To Teach Writing—goes inside real classrooms to observe teachers using picture books as models to help students with ideas, organization, and other facets of writing.
Spanish-speaking English language learners are a significant and growing population in U.S. schools. What is a fair and reliable method for assessing these students—one that promotes as well as measures learning? The authors of The Traits of Effective Spanish Writing believe the answer lies in assessments that parallel those in English, but are developed in the native language.
The Traits of Effective Spanish Writing brings "las características" to the bilingual classroom. Not a mere translation of the English version, the Spanish traits grew out of real bilingual classrooms, authentic student writing samples, and research on how students learn to read and write Spanish. While the traits are similar in Spanish and English, the Spanish version reflects characteristics particular to Spanish. For instance, Spanish writing may have a greater number of long sentences than English; organization of Spanish writing may not be as linear as that of English writing; and Spanish spelling, grammar, and punctuation conventions are very different from those of English, potentially causing difficulty for bilingual students. This guidebook contains scoring rubrics, sample papers, and the 6+1 Spanish traits—tema e ideas, organización, tono y estilo, uso del lenguaje, fluidez, gramática y ortografía, and presentación.
Like its English counterpart, Spanish Picture Books identifies high-quality children's literature to enrich the teaching of writing. An annotated bibliography lists by trait more than 50 books either written in or translated into Spanish. Books like Pelitos by Sandra Cisneros and El Viejo y Su Puerta by Gary Soto illustrate strong word choice or uso del lenguaje. La Tortilleria by Gary Paulsen and La Lagartija y el Sol provide examples of the trait of organización. English books that celebrate Spanish language and Latino culture also are included. Thirty sample lesson plans written in Spanish present ideas on how to use the books for teaching particular traits.
NWREL staff members haven't had to go door-to-door to convince teachers to try the 6+1 Trait™ Model. Instead, every week they field hundreds of e-mails and phone calls concerning the traits. The Laboratory disseminates the model to teachers, administrators, and staff development experts through school workshops and training institutes held around the country. Workshop topics include 6+1 Trait™ writing assessment, integrating writing assessment and instruction, using the traits with beginning writers, tips for administrators, and using the Spanish writing traits for instruction and assessment. Advanced institutes and workshops train experienced users of the model to spread the word back at their own school or district.
For those who can't attend a NWREL training event, a video series, produced by NWREL and distributed by Carson-Dellosa Publishing, may be the next best thing. The eight videotapes and associated materials in 6+1 Trait Writing: A Model That Works help maintain consistency and quality in the 6+1 Trait™ training process and content. Each eight-minute video (one on each trait, plus an introduction) features a definition of the trait, a student skit, teacher interviews, and sample assessments. The facilitator's guide gives tips for using the videos and sample overheads to best advantage.
When a school begins using the 6+1™ Trait Model of Assessment and Instruction, parents shouldn't be left out of the loop. Unfortunately, with the intent of helping, parents sometimes feel compelled to point out all the errors and defects they see in a child's work. What is the result? Frequently it's not an improved piece of writing, but a sulky, angry, even tearful child. Dear Parent: A Handbook for Parents of 6-Trait Writing Students suggests ways parents can respond positively and constructively to a child's efforts, as well as encourage more reading and writing. Just phrasing suggestions differently may make a big difference in how a child reacts, the booklet points out.
Dear Parent also explains the traits, the scoring rubric, and the revision process. It answers frequently asked questions such as, "What about invented spelling?" and, "Is a 5 the same as an A?" and, "If my child writes on a word processor, what differences will this make?" A Dear Parent companion videotape features teachers, parents, and students discussing the 6+1 Trait™ model.
Like a popular movie or television show, the 6+1 Trait™ Writing Model has inspired a raft of what one distributor dubs "coordinating products." No, students will not, any time soon, be dressing as Conventions or Sentence Fluency at Halloween, or toting their sandwiches in 6+1 Trait™ lunch boxes. Teachers can now buy numerous items to enhance their use of the 6+1 Trait™ Model.
Charts and bulletin board sets focus on the traits and the writing process. The "Wonderful Writers" bulletin board set, for example, gives teachers an instructive way of displaying strong student writing. Writing trait icons such as a light bulb labeled "Bright Ideas!", an eraser labeled "Correct Conventions," and a dictionary labeled "Wonderful Word Choice" call out the trait in which a particular student work excels.
Teachers can keep the model uppermost in their students' minds with the "Traits of Good Writing" bulletin board set. The set includes a checklist for each trait, blank charts for brainstorming, a 6+1 Trait poster, a large pencil character for drawing attention to student work, and a bulletin board header.
Sticky notes are a fixture on desktops everywhere. Now, they are even more indispensable to teachers with the availability of 6+1 Trait sticky notes in several handy forms: a revision checklist, an editing checklist, a scoring guide with room for comments, and a "Think About Your Writing" notepad with room for teacher comments or student self-evaluation.
NWREL produces several writing assessment posters for different audiences: one for the primary classroom, one for the upper elementary grades, one with the Spanish 6+1 Traits, and a seven-poster set for middle and high school classrooms.
The seven posters in the middle and high school set form the exclamation "Write!" when hung in sequence. In these posters, each trait—sound ideas, good organization, individual voice, powerful words, smooth fluency, and correct conventions—expresses its characteristics through both words and graphic design. The words in the poster for "smooth fluency," for example, form a graceful spiral: "My sentences begin in different ways. Some sentences are short and some are long. It just sounds good as I read it aloud—it flows. My sentences have power and punch. I have 'sentence sense.'"
What new classroom aids, instructional materials, books, videotapes, and publishing partnerships lie in the future? One thing is certain. Whatever they are and however popular they prove to be, their raison d'être is not someone's desire to sell a million widgets, but the needs and requests of teachers and students. "Teachers and kids first—products second," says Culham.
For ordering information, see the NWREL Products Catalog Online, www.nwrel.org/comm/catalog/, or
call 1-800-547-6339, ext. 519. 
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