Indy Teach

For those of you who didn't get my agenda for my Individual teach, here it is. It also has links to different site that may be helpful to you:


Introduction to the 6 Traits
-Brief explanation of “The 6-traits of Writing” teaching method
- Introduction of Vicki Spandel’s Book, “Creating Writers through 6-Trait Writing”
- Hand out papers, 5 crayons, and the Guide Book

Free Write:
This activity will give you the chance to write for 5-10 minutes about one of the following topics:
1. What is the Best/Worst Advice you have ever received?
2. What is your favorite holiday and why?
3. What is your favorite room in your house and why?
This activity will be used throughout the rest of the lesson and will be applied to each one of the new traits that we learn. Make sure you write about something you don’t mind sharing with your neighbor or the class.

The First Trait: IDEAS
- Explanation of “Ideas”
- The main questions to ask yourself while writing
- CRAYON ACTIVITY: Pass your free-write paper to the neighbor on your right. Go over the questions written on the poster in your guide-book. With your crayon:
-Highlight the main idea of your neighbor’s paper.
-Now highlight information that backs up the main idea
- Put a question mark next to anything that could use more information

The Second Trait: ORGANIZATION
- Explanation of “Organization”
-The main questions to ask while you’re writing
- Organization ACTIVITY demonstration: This is something that you would be able to do in your own classroom depending on the age level. Put a copy of “Jack and the Beanstalk” on the overhead projector and have your students come up and label which order they think the story goes in.

Reading from “Creating Writers”

The Third Trait: VOICE
-Explanation of “Voice”
-Reading from “Creating Writers” to help distinguish the difference between voices
-CRAYON ACTIVITY: Pull out your free-write paper again. Pass it to the neighbor on your left this time. On your neighbor’s paper:
- Highlight parts that really give the paper personality
-Highlight your favorite part of the paper
- At the bottom of the paper, write down a couple words describing what you think the person wanted to accomplish by writing this paper/

The Fourth Trait: SENTENCE FLUENCY
-Explain “Sentence Fluency”
-Look over some of the questions from the “Sentence Fluency” poster

The Fifth Trait: Word Choice
- Go over the list of word choices in the guidebook.
- CRAYON ACTIVITY: Underline all the words that seem common in your free write paper. Have the person on your right pick out some new words for the ones you underlined.

The Sixth Trait: CONVENTIONS/PRESENTATION
- Explain the importance of grammar and overall appearance of your paper.


SCORING


HELPFUL WEBSITES:

http://www.cyberspaces.net/6traits

http://www.ginnyhoover.com/sixtraits.htm

http://www.writingfix.com/Traits.htm

http://languagearts.pppst.com/6traits.html