Culham, Ruth. (2003). 6+1 Traits of Writing; The Complete Guide Grade 3 and Up: Everything You Need to Teach and Assess Student Writing With This Powerful Model. New York: Scholastic Professional Books
304 pages
$24.95 ISBN: 0-439-28038-9
Reviewed by Naomi Jeffery Petersen
Indiana University, South Bend
March 25, 2004
What great promises appear on the cover of this book! No fewer than five separate titles plus a visual metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle attempt to translate its appeal for every possible consumer.
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6+1 Traits of Writing THE COMPLETE GUIDE GRADES 3 AND UP Everything You Need to Teach and Assess Student Writing With This Powerful Model
+ IDEAS + SENTENCE FLUENCY +
ORGANIZATION + |
This is a commercial book intended for a broad market, widely available for less than $20—adding to its appeal. Scholastic Professional is a popular press. As such its voice is chatty and its format involves a great deal of white space for emphasis. The chapter subtitles are engagingly colloquial, each beginning with an active verb. For instance Chapter 3 is Organization: Herding Cats. This captures the essence of the book, to reduce complex attributes to their simplest tasks and to constantly consider alternatives. So Chapter 7’s Conventions: Minding Your Table Manners misses the opportunity to highlight the deeper structure of the concept. I would have chosen something like “Removing the Obstacles” or “Greasing the Wheels.” My own bias would have been to cast the entire model as a component of a community of learners improving communication. Having acknowledged that bias, we can turn to the author at hand and hers.
Culham appears to be coaching the reluctant student within her teacher readers. Often more of the content is of a romantic optimism for natural growth or breezy tips for the busy Mom. The Conclusion: The Big Picture on p. 260 includes these encouraging but vague sentiments:
This is what I challenge you to do: Question yourself…a lot. Every day, many times a day. Ask: Why am I having students do this? What do I hope they will gain? Are there other ways to do this that I haven’t considered? Why aren’t my students the kind of writers I think they can be?
followed by more of questions which address intention. This suggests a romantic ideology more than a calculated, if student-centered, pedagogy. Throughout the text the primary sympathy is with the teacher having to read student work. But this is getting ahead of our story. Let’s start with the author and her context, and then proceed to examine the product, still in terms of its self-described titles.
Ruth Culham has worked for the Northwest Regional Laboratory developing writing rubrics for some time, notably with Vicky Spandel (1995, 1997) and Rick Stiggins (2001). Culham co-authored and co-presented with Spandel (1997), although none of these is mentioned in the bibliography. They are not even acknowledged in the Acknowledgements. Stiggins went on to found his own Assessment Training Institute (www.assessmentinst.com/) and highlights the six trait model in his assessment literacy textbook, now in its third edition—which does cite Culham’s work. According to the Northwest Regional Laboratory, 6+1 Trait Writing is a copyrighted idea, and visitors to their site (www.nwrel.org) are cautioned to ask for permission and give credit to the originators of the concept. This book sports an icon that it is “approved by NWREL,” thus satisfying the demands of the parent organization. However, no credit is given to other individuals recognized in the region as key contributors to the development of the rubric that now dominates regional writing instruction.
The Theory and Practice promised on the cover is actually Rationale for Practice. Although this is a practitioner’s guide, these are professional practitioners and it behooves the author to link the model to the knowledge base of the profession. Culham includes a variety of quotes that reinforce and entertain, from Charlotte’s Web to Shakespeare with Steven King in between. These enrich the narrative and emphasize the almost exclusive focus on creative and narrative writing. To demonstrate accuracy commensurate with high school (the up part of Grade 3 and Up), page numbers for direct quotes would have been appropriate. These may have seemed too distracting for an easily distractible reader. Given the casual approach to citation, it could have been sorted into literary and professional references. Scholarly references are thin. She cites Weaver (as far back as 1979) to summarize research on teaching conventions, but otherwise the reader must simply trust her when says there is a research base, assumed to be current. Such abbreviation is also evident with mention of Calkins and Fletcher for writers workshop reference, but nothing from Graves or Atwell. The anecdotal conclusions of various authors, such as Lammot and Hemingway, suggest the power in the Powerful Model is not a research base but an intuitive basis.
Trait analysis is an important model, promoting assessment literacy as well as more thoughtful writing instruction among teachers. Oregon and Washington have enjoyed years of 6 Trait writing workshops, with many districts having embraced it or made modifications of it. Support materials including identical pages from this book are provided on many school and district websites spreading the model, which can be found in full The more complete rubric included in Culham’s appendix, is at www.nwrel.org/assessment/toolkit98/traits/index.html. The Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) is structured as a writers workshop, with drafts and revisions; its rubric weighs the five content traits (ideas, word choice, sentence fluency, voice and organization) evenly with the sixth (conventions); the ‘optional’ trait of presentation is not part of the mix. Although the scoring is holistic in that each trait is assessed for the whole effect of the paper, the approach of the book isolates the traits for instruction, with the idea of introducing them separately in order to teach the concept. Fair enough, but perhaps the complexity of applying the technicalities of conventions could be infused in the more organic process of developing sophistication of thought and expression. The Complete Guide to Grades 3 and Up: Everything You Need to Teach and Assess Student Writing with This Powerful Model is therefore not really complete.
To guide teachers of such a range of developmental levels, Grades 3 and Up, there would need to be more clear guidance for understanding the different levels. There is not. There are examples of papers written by students from different grade levels, included for the purpose of illustrating the different traits. There is little to discuss the great range of cognitive and social capacity typically found in any one classroom. Ironically, the strength of the model is its flexibility for teaching a dizzying range of students—the main reason writing is often neglected by overwrought teachers. Culham alludes to this, but there is little that specifically guides the structure of assignments. The teacher newly introduced to the model needs to see how to communicate expectations to students of different grade levels, and how the writing tasks serve the larger purpose of eliminating isolation and confusion by improving communication.
To be complete for Grades 3 and Up, there should be guides for differentiating grade levels, themselves implying gradual change. There are no sets of anchor papers that demonstrate the range of traits within a grade level. Instead, sample papers from random grade levels appear to represent a cross-section that provides evidence of the traits in all writing. What is confusing is that the different grade level samples also have different scores, and different genres. For free, though, anyone can go to the NWREL website and practice scoring: www.nwrel.org/assessment/ScoringPractice.asp?odelay=3&d=1. It is organized so that the practice can focus on different grade levels and/or different traits. You can also visit the Toolkit 98 site and find Spandel’s original Continuum for Beginning Writers which includes stages of exploring, emerging, developing, and fluent/experienced: www.nwrel.org/assessment/toolkit98/six.html#primary.
This is not a complete guide for teaching the traits for all grade levels; rather it is a guide that uses reference to different grade levels in order to help its readers understand the traits themselves. Infused in the narrative is also an ideology which the author no doubt feels compelled to stress given the emphasis on standardized assessment that may be at the expense of a developmental model. The voice of the narrative seems elementary to most secondary teachers: “Wow!” is its highest accolade in the guides that appear to be for students. To its credit, each chapter includes a chart with Responses to Give Students for the trait of focus. However, the subtitle for this chart is always When a writer is using (insert trait) well, tell him or her (insert comments), revealing that Culham’s primary technique is of cheerleading for the momentum of success more than coaching for improvement of technique. Her suggested comments are peppered with “Nice” “I like” “good work” and “good job”—more value judgments than analytical assessment. Missing is the thoughtful analysis of communication which probes, clarifies, elaborates, redirects, or supports student thought. The use of approval for motivation brings up the whole Punishedby Rewards issue (Kohn, 1993).
The analysis of writing is the primary objective of using the model, but the guides fall short of such analysis. The scoring guides for each convention are one-page 3-column summaries but are less useful than they could be: they are organized in reverse order from 5 (strong) to 1 (weak), perpetuating the ‘one right answer’ or ‘anything less than perfect is a catastrophe’ perspective that the model is philosophically trying to challenge. Another weakness in these guides is the undifferentiated listing of descriptors, instead of showing threads of progress for the trait’s component indicators. For instance, buried in the Conventions guide are indications of paragraphing, which could easily be presented as a thread. This leads to a general comment regarding the book’s presentation. Rather than the 7x9” format, Culham might have chosen the standard 8 ½ x 11 which would have avoided the frequent spill from one page to the next. A busy array of different fonts and icons try to help the reader recognize the many components that recur in each trait’s chapter, but a predictable layout would be a better use of visual cues.
The 6+1 Trait rubric for analyzing writing is an exercise in performance assessment and in the developmental approach to process skills. Writing is the premier process skill developed in schools, and the model’s strength is its emphasis on growth in each trait. The challenge to most writers is perspective and purpose, hence the handy old acronym of ‘TAP TAP TAP’ for topic, audience, and purpose. This is the language used in most state standards, and here is a missed opportunity for Culham: connecting the model to the mandates. This book does not easily help a teacher sort out different genres of writing, nor which descriptors in the rubrics are universal and which are specific to different purposes.
A complete guide for the contemporary teacher would address the frustration of having so little time for the luxury of thoughtfulness necessary for quality writing as well as the reading of same. Increased accountability means time spent for test preparation that is ironically counter to best practices: drill and kill exercises are often mandated by panicked administrators desperate to increase test scores. Thus, the appeal made by Culham to a teacher’s higher sensibility of nurturing students through the process may be lost. These teachers demand soundbites and minilessons, teachable moments and routines that can be infused in an already scripted day (see Graves, 1994, 2002, 2003), and she could have addressed the state of teaching writing in terms other than a teacher simply feeling fatigued by reading poor examples.
Ways of tracking individual progress in multiple traits would be helpful; note how complex such assessment is when discussed by Marzano et al. (1993) or Wiggins and McTigue (1998). This is powerfully important, for multi-layered rubrics are now the norm in pedagogical assessment, too, as seen in Danielson (1996). Many states now require portfolios of teachers that include the analysis of student learning so teachers need methods to gather data at the classroom level and demonstrate their capacity to interpret student work and use it to inform instruction. Therefore, it certainly behooves teachers to be proficient in the use of rubrics and it is reasonable for this book should appear after two decades of development in the field, a sincere if over-predicted effort.
In summary, the book does not fulfill the promises of its titles. It does not connect theory with practice nor provide a complete guide to teach and assess student writing grades three and up. However, if the book’s primary goal is to introduce teachers unfamiliar with the structure of rhetoric to the analysis of any writing, it does that much. The strident, cheerful voice may appeal to its audience.
References
Graves, D. (1994). A fresh look at writing. Heinneman.
Graves, D. (2002) Testing is not teaching: What should count in education. Heinneman.
Graves, D. (2003) Writing: Teaching and children at work –twentieth anniversary edition. Heinneman.
Kohn, A. (1999). Punished by rewards: The trouble with gold stars, incentive plans, A’s, and other bribes. Houghton Mifflin.
Marzano, R. , Pickering, D. & McTigue, J. (1993). Assessing student outcomes: Performance assessment using the Dimensions of Learning model. Alexandria, VA: Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Spandel, V. (1996) Seeing with new eyes Portland, OR: Northwest Regional Education Laboratory.
Spandel, V. & Culham, R. (1997) Six-Trait writing. Portland, OR: Northwest Regional Education Laboratory.
Spandel, V. (2000). Creating writers through Six-Trait Writing assessment and instruction (3rd ed.) Allyn& Bacon.
Stiggins, R. (2001). Student-involved Classroom Assessment (3rd ed.).
Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory. Toolkit98. Accessible Feb 20, 2004 at www.nwrel.org/assessment/ToolKit98.asp
Spandel, V. & Stiggins, R. (1990) Creating Writers: Linking Assessment and Instruction. ADDIS.
Wiggins, G. & McTigue, J. (1999). Design for understanding. Alexandria, WV: Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development.
About the Reviewer
Naomi Jeffery Petersen, Assistant Professor of Education, Indiana University, South Bend, IN has years and years of experience teaching students grade 3 and up through graduate school to write. Her scholarly interests include professional dispositions, learner-centered ideology and methods, and data-driven decision-making by school leaders.
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