Authors at Work!

Over the course of this school year, we have been encouraging writing through the use of free write journals during work on writing as a center. We also plan weekly mini lessons focused on writing in our classrooms.  This week, students had their first experiences with one-on-one writing conferences. We were excited to hear all of our students' ideas and see the growth they have made in their writing already! Our writing this year has focused around the philosophy of 6 + 1 Traits for Writing.  Through a lot of discussion and modeling, we have elaborated on the traits that you would find in pieces of good writing.  We have slowly covered the writing traits of: ideas, organization, and conventions. We will be teaching the traits of voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and presentation throughout the remainder of the school year.

Short definitions of the writing traits are listed below:

Ideas (the meaning and development of the message)
Organization (the structure of the piece)
Voice (the tone of the piece-the personal stamp the writer leaves)
Word Choice (the vocabulary a writer chooses to use to make the piece interesting)
Sentence Fluency (how words and phrases flow together)
Conventions (the correct usage of grammar)
Presentation (the overall appearance of the work)

We are moving towards publishing a new piece of writing to be posted on KidBlog when they are complete. We will let you know when these pieces are posted on the blog!