CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.5

Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.

Strategy: Revision (Chiles)

Detailed Description: Revision is a way to learn about the craft of writing. Revision skills complement reading skills; revision requires that writers distance themselves from the writing and critically evaluate a text. Revision includes explaining the process clearly, modeling the process, and providing guided practice with feedback.

Practical Application: Students have written a narrative. The teacher explains the revision process to the students. This includes providing meaningful goals, such as a checklist of what makes a good narrative. This could be displayed in a writing sample compared with a chart/rubric. The students would then do peer editing. The teacher would scaffold students through meaningful teacher-student dialogue. These collaborative efforts reinforce writing as a social process.

TRAP: This strategy is included in Best Practices in Writing Instruction, written in 2007 by Steve Graham, Charles MacArthur, and Jill Fitzgerald. These practices were compiled in order to present evidence-based practices for helping all K-12 students develop their skills as writers, drawing clear connections to the Common Core State Standards. Leading authorities describe how to teach the skills and strategies that students need to plan, draft, evaluate, and revise multiple types of texts.

Fitzgerald, J., Graham, S., and MacArthur, C. (2007) Best Practices in Writing Instruction. New York: Guilford.

Strategy: 6+1 Trait Writing (Ramsey)

Detailed Description: 6+1 Trait Writing is a rubric that breaks writing down into seven parts. They are: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation. The rubrics developed for 6+1 are designed to meet state and Common Core standards.

Practical Application: The students will be introduced to the standards found in the rubrics and held to those standards throughout their time in the classroom. Writing assignments would be filtered through this rubric, and the result would be students being able to write in a much better way that is in line with state and federal writing standards.  

TRAP: The 6+1 method was designed by Education Northwest thirty years ago, and has been revised and updated to meet current standards. The method is designed to help teachers define and understand good writing qualities, and teach them to their students as well using the rubrics. It is implemented in classrooms across the globe.

“6+1 Trait Writing” in EducationNorthwest.org. Retrieved from  http://educationnorthwest.org/traits/about-61-trait-writing.