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Home : 2008 : January : 6

For Ideas
By mt

try different ways of planning. We actually hurry children through this part of the writing process way too fast. If we hurry them, they come up with trite ideas, and trite ideas make trite essays. Slow down on this part.
I have sixth graders, so this may be easier for me, but I tell my kids to "write important" or it's not worth their time to write, or mine to read. I don't mean everything they write about needs to be earth shaking in its importance, but comparing and contrasting Ashley and Brittany is LAME to read, unless the writer is talking about what makes each girl actually tick. Do you know

what I mean?

Use the tools your district wants you to use, just go ahead and teach six trait lessons. You don't have to CALL them six trait lessons. I have heard that six traits is going away, but I haven't seen anything better yet. I am about to finish my master's degree in The Teaching of Writing, and so I am very interested in what's coming, but it would have to be pretty good to beat six traits, in my opinion. There is nothing in the world wrong with Author's Notebook. I do think, though, that it is an additional tool, not a replacement tool. Your district would be wise to combine the two. Good writing instruction isn't one-size-fits-all. It's great to mix it up and not be totally dependent upon one way, like six traits. You should have lots of ways to meet the same goals. Take the best of Author's Notebook and the best of six traits and you will have a really great program going on in your room.

Trite: Ashley and Brittany are two of my friends. They are both in sixth grade. They both go to ____. They are both eleven. They are both girls.

I cannot tell you how sick of this I became. So we began to talk about "writing important." Tell me that Ashley is a gymnast, but is so focused on that that it's hard to hang around with her. Tell me that Brittany is a little backstabber if she doesn't get her way. Tell me that her brother is cute. INTEREST ME. There's a lot to talk about with Brittany and Ashley that doesn't have anything to do with their hair color.

That's my little rant. Ways to plan don't always have to be a web (although I agree that is a very approachable way for kids to plan). We can talk through our plan with our writing group (another post, but writing groups really, really work well). We can draw. We can manipulate things to help us think (personally, I pull weeds when I'm incubating a new writing piece. For some reason, that helps me. I don't know if it affects my brainwaves, or what). We can list. Teach them many ways to plan.