6 +1 Traits of Writing - Afterschool Express

Writing with Grade School Children

What I love about our team of after-schooling parents (Those of us that believe strongly in providing educational opportunities to our grade school children at home) Little Wonder Days, Mouse Grows Mouse Learns, Just Playin’ Around, Mama Smiles, Superheroes and Princesses, The Educators’ Spin On It, and What Do We Do All Day is that each and everyone does amazing things with their children! I get great ideas from them each week and they inspire me to be a better parent and a better educator. What I love is that activities that feature reading AND writing are being blogged about!!!

Mama Smiles posts about her daughters first story.

Just Playing Around’s daughter charts what she has learned about different countries as her homework.

and Learning With Mouse’s daughter writes a Birthday Card

After school, we have been focusing on writing the last month, as reading and writing is connected. Strengthening a child’s writing skills will have an effect on their reading skills. At home, I use a combination of Interactive Writing and Writers Workshop approach to writing with my kindergartner. Both are research based practices that have shown to be beneficial for improving students reading and writing.

This last month, I have read this professional book called, “6+1 Traits of Writing: The Complete Guide for the Primary Grades” by Ruth Culham. I know that as a parent of a kindergartner we spend lots of time generating ideas for what we write about, but this book gave some great idea on how to include more and important parts of the writing process; ideas, organization, voice (tone), word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions. I found Ms. Culham’s website online and she offers free rubrics (a rubric is a way to assess writing) for both teachers and students on each area. There are some for different ages in both teacher and student friendly forms. These can be used to see where your children are in their writing and also as a way to generate ideas on how to help them strengthen their writing.

My daughter has been making lots of lists and has started writing several stories, including the story, “The Grl that codint red the noospapr.” (The girl that couldn’t read the newspaper) I am planning on printing these rubrics to expand on one of her chosen stories. We usually just use blank paper folded in half and stapled like a book for writing in. I will only focus on one or two aspects this week and will update you on how it goes in future Afterschool Express posts!

I’d love to see how you encourage and expand upon your child’s writing! Little Wonder Days is hosting this weeks’ Afterschool Blog Hop. We’d love to see the amazing things you do with your children!!!

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Comments

maryanne @ mama smiles says
November 13, 2011 at 12:50 pm
Thanks for featuring Emma's story! She was super proud of it =)
The book you reviewed sounds interesting for both parents and teachers! I'll have to see if I can find a copy.
Raising a Happy Child says
November 13, 2011 at 2:19 pm
Thanks for featuring our birthday card writing too! We started to talk more about what makes a good story – Anna's writing tends to be very factual at this point – Dogs like to sleep type of story 🙂 When we read together, I am asking her to identify characters, settings, problems and solutions in the stories we read.
Alicia@ Mommy Delicious says
November 14, 2011 at 1:22 am
This is so great! My son's in PreK, do you think this book would be good for him as well?
Amanda says
November 14, 2011 at 9:28 am
Maryanne and Natalie – you both do such great things with your kids! I look forward to seeing how all of our kids grow this year =) Alicia, This book is geared more for K-3, but if you are interested in learning more about teaching writing it is definatly worth checking out from the library. There is a lot of resources on the 6+1 traits of writing currently. Most are very good books (I just typed it into Amazon) Ruth Culham has a bunch of books out there too! This one was just the one that was chosen as a support textbook for my reading and writing connection class. I found it helpful and easy to read.