Six Traits and ShrinkLit

The Six Traits
This week a video and the reading focused on these Six Traits:

1. Ideas
2. Organization
3. Voice
4. Word Choice
5. Conventions (i.e. Spelling and Punctuation)
6. Sentence Fluency

These Six Traits are supposed to help students to develop and improve their writing.

The students in my classroom could use the first strategy during the pre-writing stage, then use the organization strategy in order to help them transfer that pre-writing into a first draft. After the first draft, students can use the trait of voice, word choice, conventions, and sentence fluency when they are revising and editing their own writing, then again when they peer edit writing. 

These six traits don’t only help my students, but they can help me develop my writing. I can model how I use these six traits to form and create my writing, as well as how I use it to make my writing better.

I wonder how much background knowledge students need to bring to the table in order to use these in their writing. For some students, they would need each of these traits introduced and focused on for a week, making the writing process six weeks long. Would I change the writing prompts in order to elude any boredom from my students, or would I keep the overall theme the same in order to make these traits easier for students to apply? Obviously this would depend upon the exit slips and the individual learning needs and pace for my students, but I can’t help but formulate in my head all of the different ways I may have to structure the six traits in order to make them most useful for my students.

Here is an example of analyzing a poem, Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott using the Six Traits:

Thirty Years ago, my older brother, who was

ten years old at the time, was trying to get a

report on birds written that he'd had three

months to write, which was due the next day.

We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and

he was at the kitchen table close to tears,

surrounded by binder paper and pencils and

unopened books on birds, immobilized by the

task ahead. Then my father sat down beside

him, put his arm around my brother's

shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy, just

take it bird by bird."

1. Idea: 

My father encouraged my brother to get started on a daunting task by taking it one step at a time.

2. Organization:

The setting was given first; the stage was set, before the action took place.

3. Voice:

This poem develops a strong voice; you read this poem as if she is telling you the story in person.

4. Word Choice:

She used the antiquated term binder paper in order to keep in tune with the fact that this event happened thirty years ago. She also used alliteration in her father's advice in order to make the advice speak even louder.

5. Conventions:

The punctuation causes flows and ebbs in order to capture the attention of the reader and in order to emphasize the emotions that her brother was feeling and how calming the advice of the father was to the son. Before the father stepped in there was little punctuation in order to make the reader feel how fast and anxious her brother was when they were on vacation; then when the father comes into the picture there are commas, which cause the reader to pause and feel the peace the father brought to the situation.

6. Sentence Fluency:

The sentences are purposefully left hanging at the end of lines in order to make the first word of the new line to be most powerful.

ShrinkLit

A strategy that was highlighted in the reading talked about the ShrinkLit strategy; besides the annoying lack of a space and the too obvious connection to the strategy, the students in my classroom could benefit from using this strategy. When a student uses this strategy, they are summarizing what they have read by writing a poem; this strategy is a bit more complicated and requires more advanced skills for students to use. In addition, this is a summarization strategy that utilizes poetry in order to make it stand apart from the other research and evidence-based practices already in use, such as RAP, SQ3R, or GIST.

There are five steps to this strategy:

1. Ask students to choose a few chapters in a novel or a short piece of literature.

2. Tell them to write a poem that focuses on the main ideas.

3. The poem should be ten lines long.

4. They should use figurative language.

5. Students share with a small group of peers or with the whole class.

Notice that this should be used mostly with non-fiction pieces of literature, with older students who have already studied figurative language, and with students who have built a community of trust so that students already feel as though they can share their work with the other members of the group or the whole class. While this may be a more creative way to have students synthesize information, there are too many constraints for some students and too little direction for others. I can imagine a student with a disability struggling or thriving to complete this type of assignment.

 

One example of using the strategy:

This is a ShrinkLit poem about the Six Traits.

 

Ideas create itineraries for writing; record them before they run away.

Organization makes or breaks the creation;

What goes where, and what will make my audience care?

Voice gives the story character; my voice lets them know I'm the narrator.

Word Choice can make the difference between boring and exploring;

Conventions, conventions, why do we need conventions?

Spelling and punctuation can get a work some mentions.

Sentence Fluency; where is the flow? Where will this sentence go?

Go through the steps once again, 1-6, thank goodness there's not ten!

When using these together, I'm guaranteed to become a better writer!

Sources:

http://www.adlit.org/article/39928/

Spandel, Vicki. (2013) Creating Writers: Through 6 Traits, Process, Workshop, and Literature. New York: Pearson.