COVER STORY
When it comes to using their own money to purchase classroom materials and supplies, teachers have pockets deeper than Captain Kangaroo's...
About Ginny Hoover...
Ginny Hoover took an early retirement after 31 years of teaching in Kansas public schools. Her experience spans the 5th through 8th grades. During the last ten years she has functioned as a trainer of teachers in a variety of areas in her district, surrounding districts, professional organizations, and teacher service centers. At the state level Ginny is a state trainer for the KS State Writing Assessment (based on the Six Traits Writing Model), a member of the Kansas Social Studies Committee for writing the social studies standards, benchmarks, and indicators, and the lead trainer for the state in government and civics.
Recently, Teacher TimeSavers published a variety teaching units and tutoring hookups that Ginny wrote and designed. These include a Six Traits materials, literary unit for Taming the Star Runner, Hookups for Language Arts, Transcripts of Trials for Goldilocks, The Wolf, and Mr. Dad, and Tactile/Kinesthetic Activity Patterns.
The Gifts of Children by Hoover and Carroll Killingsworth, a book about recognizing, acknowledging, and refining the gifts of children, is scheduled to be published some time this year. Visit Teachers Helping Children--The Gifts Project for additional information.
Joyce McLeod, Jan Fisher, and Ginny will soon have a classroom management book to be published by ASCD. It will cover managing time and space, managing the classroom, and managing instructional strategies.
The Gifts of All Children
by Carroll Killingsworth and Ginny Hoover
The Eclectic Teacher
by Ginny HooverSix Traits Resources
We as teachers don't always need to be re-inventing the wheel. A multitude of resources are available on the Internet that will help you with teaching using the Six Traits. Some quality links follow. Enjoy.
Northwest Regional Educational Lab is a tremendous resource for teachers beginning with the Six Traits. Besides providing quality rubric, many other resources are available at a click. Much of what is available there is free.
About Six Trait includes Research, FAQ, Trait Myths, Beginning Writers, and Info Requests.
Scoring includes Scoring Guides (rubrics) and Scoring practice.
Teaching includes Getting Started, Lesson Plans, Discussion Forums, and Prompts.
Developmental Continuum in Writing provides information on how to develop a program in writing for a school using the Wauwatosa School District as an example.
6+1 TraitTM Writing Products is the site where you can purchase materials to support Six Traits instruction from NWREL.
From Ginny's Site Links many valuable resources are available. If you are looking for literature to align with the traits, you might use the following sites:
There are many sites that have free lesson plans for Six Traits.
Kris Nelson's 105 free lessons (You can download the lessons free from this link and then email Kris for the free materials that go with the lessons---She asks that you send $5.00 to pay for the CD and mailing costs. Further information on link site.)
This information comes directly from my site, but sometimes too much can be confusing---so I'll stop with these references and hope you'll find some things you can really use to help you teach using the Six Traits. My published materials are available through Teacher TimeSavers and photos of the completed projects are here.
Resources via Vicki Spandel who started with NWREL and now is working with Great Source
Write Kits from grade 3 through grade 8 by Vicki Spandel and this link also includes the books that suggest lessons for Six Traits tied to literature (near bottom of page)
The Eclectic Teacher