Six Traits

• Ideas
• Organization
• Voice
• Word Choice
• Sentence Fluency
• Conventions

Download Jim Burke's 6 Traits Rubric

Download a simple, student-friendly 6 Traits Rubric

Jim Burke assesses the Six-Traits writing rubric to be "a powerful road map and the tools needed to improve not only writing but also the teaching of writing."

---

From Fun With Writing . . .

Ideas & Content
As you begin your paper you generate ideas.  Your ideas and content are the reasons for writing a paper.  Every paper should convey a message and be easy to follow. 

Organization
Organizing your ideas helps a reader move through your paper in a meaningful way. 

Voice
Your voice is what gives your writing personality, flavor and style.

Sentence Fluency
Fluent writing has rhythm.  Sentences vary in length and structure.  It is easy and pleasurable to read aloud. 

Word Choice
The specific words that you choose create images, capture a reader's attention and make your story memorable.

Conventions
When the first draft is finished it is time to start editing for conventions.  These include spelling, punctuation, grammar, capitalization and paragraphing.  Proper use of conventions make your story easy for others to read.

Summer, 2013 - Reading List

Street Love by Walter Dean Myers
Scorpions by Walter Dean Myers
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
From the Barrio to the Board Room 
or Mi Barrio  (the comic book version) by Robert Renteria
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Code Talker: The Navajo Marines of World War Two by Joseph Bruchac
Freedom Riders by Raymond Arsenault
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
The Keeping Quilt by Patricia Polacco
Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

Spring, 2013

"There are some things, as Black men, we can only do for ourselves."

"We know that too many young men in our community continue to make bad choices. Growing up, I made a few myself.  And I have to confess, sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a Black man down . . ."

". . . If we’re being honest with ourselves, too few of our brothers and sisters have the opportunities you’ve had here at Morehouse. In troubled neighborhoods all across the country – many of them heavily African American – too few of our citizens have role models to guide them."

— President Obama, May, 2013 - Morehouse College Commencement Speech

"The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self,
to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar,
is the test of their power."

Link to "Implicit Attitudes" Page 



 

Online Language Arts Games 

• Quick Vocabulary Quiz
   
• Name That Thing Game
   
• Spelling Game
   
• Scrabble Zone

 

Teacher Report Card

Urban Language Arts Teacher 

Proficiency, Performance, and 

Personal Integrity Assessment

nsa2013