Assistant Principal - Teaching and Learning 

Writing At Karoo

6+1 Writing Traits

This term we have continued to focus on how we teach Writing at Karoo with a specific focus on embedding the 6+1 Writing Traits into our teaching practice, in order to support all students to achieve their best in writing.

Staff have been engaging in their own professional learning on how to best embed the 6+1 Traits of Writing. We have been working hard during Leadership meetings, PLC Leader meetings, PLC Team Collaborative Planning time, Staff Forums and PLTs (Professional Learning Teams- English) to:

• to increase consistency of practice across the school
• improve teaching practice 
• improve student outcomes. 

What is the 6+1 Traits of Writing? 

The 6+1 Traits are a way of teaching, modelling, and assessing the instruction of writing. The Six Traits of writing are Voice, Ideas, Presentation, Conventions, Organization, Word Choice and Sentence Fluency. It creates a common vocabulary and guidelines for teachers to use with students so that they become familiar with the terms used in writing. It develops consistency from grade level to grade level. The Six Traits model allows teachers and students to focus on one or two elements of writing at a time creating a more manageable and effective way for students to learn how to write. It also is a means of providing specific feedback to students through the assessment of their writing. The Six Traits help both the student and teacher identify the areas of writing that the student needs work at improving. Good writing must incorporate the Six Traits. The “+1” trait is the presentation of the writing piece. This is the trait that is considered for all writing, but not specifically or directly taught as the other traits are.

Continuing to learn:

When collaboratively planning, teaching teams are developing Learning Intentions and Success Criteria that ‘spotlight’ a particular Trait. Through work with the English PLT, teams are making intentional choices about the language they use to help provide consistency and explicit teaching of the Traits, and building up co-constructed anchor charts to display and use within the classroom. Last week the Leadership team, together with a group of teachers, conducted a Learning Walk and Talk (LWT) on Writing at Karoo. Specifically a LWT is a way of monitoring our impact by conducting short interviews with students from every grade, within every year level, across the school. This helps us to determine how much our students know and can talk about the chosen focus, as well as determine their attitudes and motivation. The LWT data is then analysed and shared with staff so that we can make purposeful, short term goals to help support continued growth (both teaching practice and student learning). 

What the students have to say:

Austin in 4M

Austin enthusiastically talked abut a recent writing piece of his named, ‘Spear Spider’ that he created whilst the Year 4s were focusing on the Trait, ‘Word Choice’. Austin loves free writing and says that he has, “got better at Word Choice. We have been learning about bad words and better words and that word choice helps to hook the reader in. I’ve learnt a lot of words…. So you know better words and how to keep your sentences moving and fluent.” 

David in 5B

David was able to share his personal writing goal which is to, “include interesting Ideas in my writing” (linked to the 6+1 Writing Trait of Ideas). David was able to explain in his own words that this helps “to write more interesting pieces of writing, instead of ones with obvious storylines and boring endings.”  Recently, the Year 5 students have been writing Discussion pieces, trying to help the reader make up their mind. “I find it really fun” he says, “the topics really suit us” and “I also love free writes”. 

Our recent LWT data identified that over 80% of our students not only like writing, they are very enthusiastic about it! Students capacity to identify, talk about and relate their personal writing goals to the 6+1 Traits continues to improve. At home, you may like to ask your own child/ren about that they love about writing and what they can do to improve- with an emphasis on what skill they need to learn next!

Feeling very proud,

Ms Ashley Kuusela