The Six Traits of Writing is a framework used to assess and teach writing skills. It focuses on six key qualities (aka traits) that are essential to effective writing: 1) Ideas, 2) Organization, 3) Sentence Fluency, 4) Word Choice, 5) Conventions, and 6) Voice. In...
Are you a writer? A communicator? A thinker? A problem solver? Do you need to come up with great ideas? Yes, you are. Yes, you do. Let’s learn how to find these great ideas! Please note that this page indeed discusses getting ideas for writing. However, as a whole,...
It’s time for students and all writers to take control and ownership of their writing! You can do this by expanding your world of ideas. You can also do this by understanding the power of statements. Yes, I said statements, aka declarative sentences. I know. You...
Understanding essay writing is critical for teachers, students, readers, and writers. Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), a famous essayist, defined an essay this way: “The essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything.” That’s a great...
This may be the most informative page ever on topic sentences. You will learn a mountain of topic-sentence theory and advice from five classic books on writing well. However, I also analyze the paragraphs from these classic books to see if they follow their own...
In one of my favorite informal experiments, Professor Arthur A. Stern removed the paragraph breaks from a section of text from “Fundamentals of Good Writing” (1950) and had English teachers reparagraph it. Only 5 out of 100 teachers reparagraphed it as the original...
UNITY is one of the more important concepts in writing. What’s unity? Well, unity is oneness. In writing, unity is oneness of purpose. We can sum up unity in writing with one question: What’s your point? Everything must speak to that point in some way to achieve unity...
Students want to know, “Why doesn’t every paragraph have a topic sentence? How do real writers create paragraphs?” Do you see topic sentences in all of the paragraphs you read? Well, it’s not your imagination. Not all paragraphs have topic sentences. This is not just...
“What’s your point?” That’s the most critical concept in writing. It’s crucial at the paragraph level and the whole composition level. Writers need clear and organized thinking throughout the entire writing process. Let’s look at four key concepts that help writers...
Are you teaching the truth about paragraphs? Probably not. The truth is not what you think it is. Much of what you have learned about paragraphs is simply not true. In 1866, Alexander Bain created a list of six paragraph rules that became the foundation of modern...
The fastest, most effective way to teach students clear and organized multi-paragraph writing… Guaranteed!