FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - July 19, 2002
For more information contact:
Kathleen Carpenter, Director of Promotions
E-Mail: kathleen@teachers.net
SAN DIEGO, CA -- Teachers.Net announced this week the addition of a Six Traits of Writing Chatboard forum for the discussion of a writing model implemented by teachers of elementary and other grades in a growing number of districts across the country. A Six Traits of Writing email discussion group has been active for several years at Teachers.Net.
According to Ginny Hoover, Teachers.Net Gazette Columnist and author of the Teacher TimeSavers Hookups for Six Traits (Six Traits class response/tutorial and scoring card patterns for students and teachers), "Six Traits is a writing model for both instruction and assessment. The Six Traits rubrics are well written and encourage growth in writing. Since the instruction and assessment utilize the same set of rubrics, students have the opportunity to work toward quality writing with the assurance that their efforts will align with assessment."
Hoover explained, "When teachers work with Six Traits, they find they have a comprehensive set of rubrics for instruction, a set of objective tools for assessing the needs and growth of their students, and a explicit guide for scoring writing objectively--all in one model. Yet, teachers will find they still have the freedom to make decisions on the methods of instruction. It is not a patterned writing program."
The Six Traits are: Ideas & Content, Organization, Voice, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, and Conventions. Each emphasizes different but important writing skills. For example, Word Choice encourages children to select just the right word without losing the "natural" sound for the writer. Students learn how to express their unique writing individuality with the Voice trait. The model helps students realize that without well-developed Ideas and Content along with appropriate Organization, the quality of the writing may be poor even with perfect Conventions.
Additional information about each of the 6 traits is contained in transcripts of Teachers.Net live chats at http://teachers.net/archive/sixtraitsarchive.html.
In addition to the new Six Traits Chatboard, the Teachers.Net English Center includes forums for discussions of Books & Literature, Reading & Writing, High School English, Accelerated Reader, Remedial Reading/Reading Recovery, 4 Blocks Literacy, Buiilding Blocks Literacy (for Kindergarten). Chatboard and can be accessed at http://teachers.net/english and http://teachers.net/mentors. Mailrings: http://teachers.net/mailrings.