6-Traits Resources

At its core, the six-word memoir teaches us to be concise but also introspective. Try describing yourself in six words. Not easy, right?

So how does the six-word memoir make sense in a history class? As a history teacher, I am always looking to integrate my class with as many different disciplines as possible. I also try to turn my students away from being just consumers of information and toward being global creators of everything cool. When I learned that the National Writing Project teamed up with Mozilla to create a Thimble webmaking application for six-word memoirs, I began to realize the potential this could have in my history classes.

Resource Topics
Teaching Writing - Writing across the Curriculum

Welcome to the UCLA Writing Project, a site of the California Writing Project and National Writing Project since 1977. We work with teachers of all disciplines and levels, helping them not only to expand their repertoires as teachers but also as writers. We believe that all -- teachers and students --can become good writers and experience the satisfaction of capturing thoughts in just the right words.

How are sites utilizing NWP Connect the National Writing Projects online social network to support enhance and develop communities of practice both online and face-to-face Join a conversation with several site leaders who are building Connect...

NWP Connect: Building Communities of Practice

How are sites utilizing NWP Connect—the National Writing Project's online social network—to support, enhance, and develop communities of practice, both online and face-to-face? Join a conversation with several site leaders who are building Connect communities for their Summer Institute participants, for study groups, and for other kinds of professional learning opportunities.

Funded under the Supporting Effective Educators Development (SEED) program was the National Writing Project. Based in Berkeley, Calif., the NWP will use its $11.3 million grant to train 3,000 K-12 teacher-leaders in the teaching of writing, who will then conduct professional development for teachers in local schools and districts in all 50 states.

Summary:

Over the past 8 years, the National Writing Project created and refined the Analytic Writing Continuum (AWC) Assessment System, originally based on the framework of the Six +1 Trait Writing Model (Bellamy, 2005), for research and instructional purposes. Unlike the holistic scores used in most large-scale writing assessments, which offer limited information about how improvements in student writing may be achieved, the AWC provides accurate assessment of both holistic and important performance attributes of writing.

"Writing Project sites across the country are eager to be part of efforts to strengthen the teaching of writing and are well-versed in the kinds of expectations and approaches the Common Core emphasizes," says Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, Director of National Programs and Site Development for the NWP. "They also have a strong sense of the kind of writing instruction that goes beyond what the standards cover, yet may be required by local standards for real college- and career-readiness as well as active citizenship."

Because of the attention to writing in the Common Core State Standards, the National Writing Project provides a number of ways to help districts and teachers get the necessary professional development to successfully implement the standards in the classroom.

On February 28, 2013, site leaders and writing center conference coordinators from the NVWP will discuss the power of student-run writing centers with the National Writing Project onNWP Radio. The one-hour radio show, titled “Investing in Leadership: Student-Run Writing Centers

Summary: Various forces, such as the Common Core State Standards, are bringing about a newfound focus on writing instruction for teachers. One of these teachers is Linda Denstaedt, co-director of the Oakland Writing Project in Michigan, who uses strategies such as the "multidraft read" in order to encourage her students to approach reading like a writer.

Join the editors of What Teaching Means: Stories from America's Classrooms, as well as several teacher-consultants/authors whose essays are featured in the text.

The E Anthology 2.0 has a new address, a new look, and many new possibilities. Although this new E Anthology 2.0 is intended primarily, as all the former E Anthologies were, for the TCs in summer institutes to share their writing, the E Anthology 2.0 is open to all the members of our national community.

Summary:

Suzie Null, a teacher-consultant with the Bisti Writing Project in New Mexico, finds that middle school teachers in program improvement schools in Southern California who have gone through NWP programs tend to use more materials, more teaching techniques, a broader range of interactions, and a broader range of learning opportunities for students than teachers who haven't gone through NWP programs.

Summary:

As part of the first-ever Digital Learning Day, NWP has teamed up with the Alliance for Excellent Education, the New York Times Learning Network, Figment, and Edutopia to highlight innovative, technology-rich teaching practices that make learning more personalized and engaging.

Excerpt from Article

Tanya Baker, the director of national programs for the National Writing Project, the Berkeley, Calif.-based nonprofit organization with multiple sites throughout the country that provides resources and professional development to writing teachers, said the writing portion of the standards also represents a shift to a richer and more rigorous understanding of writing.

"Teachers with a significant amount of experience might not have very much experience with the kind of teaching that would lead kids to be successful with these standards," she said.

"My worry about online professional development around common-core standards is that it'll be one-size-fits-all," Ms. Baker said. "Even as we're thinking nationally, we need to be aware locally" of teachers' specific backgrounds and instructional methods.