Last year, I was introduced to the Six Traits of Writing, a framework for teaching quality writing... and instantly loved the catchy "VOICES" acronym and related writing strategies. I began to implement these strategies in my classroom right away and yes, of course, I created a related Pinterest board. Since then, I have read the official Six Traits book and researched how this model could help my middle school students become better writers.
The Six Traits of Writing are voice (tone or style), organization (structure), ideas (content), conventions (mechanics), excellent word choice (using exciting words), and sentence fluency (rhythm and flow). These writing focus areas have a prominent place on the bulletin board in my classroom, where I plan to post the strategies one by one throughout the year.
The Six Traits apply to the English classroom most obviously, but there are implications for each of the other subjects as students complete projects, write responsive or formal essays, and think critically about the content. This Wednesday I presented a Six Traits professional development workshop for the middle school staff. Most of the other middle school teachers aren't English instructors, so we focused on implementing the Six Traits across the curriculum. It was a great time of sharing, brainstorming, and working on aligning our evaluations with the Six Traits. I absolutely loved seeing my colleagues working together in content-area teams to discuss how they could see the Traits come alive in their classrooms. I'm eager to see how the Six Traits continue to influence our teaching over the course of this school year!
