Ideas and Organization: The Most Important Traits
Paul B. Diederich was a pioneer of the Six Traits of Writing. The Six Traits built on his model of five traits and fifty-five categories of comment. Although his traits were a bit different than the current Six Traits of Writing, his traits did include both ideas and organization. In fact, for Diederich, ideas and organization were the two most important traits, and they received greater weight.
Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay agrees with Paul B. Diederich. Did you know that Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay guarantees that students will be able to get ideas, organize their ideas, and then write a complete essay using those ideas—quickly and easily? It does!
It’s not that ideas and organization are the only traits, but once students have mastered these two traits, everything else in teaching writing becomes easier. The truth is that it’s easy to layer on the other traits on top of great ideas and effective organization. The reverse is not true! Here’s why…
Organization: The Hardest Trait
Organization is the hardest trait.
K-12 Student Writers Across America
Not only is organization one of the most important traits, but it’s also one of the hardest traits for students to master. I have seen the above quote many times over the years in the world of Six Traits. I’ll admit that I’m not quite sure who “K-12 Student Writers Across America” is; however, my experience teaching writing has me agreeing with them.
Do Students Understand Organization in Writing?
Have you ever been surprised to discover what your students’ understanding of a concept really was? Sometimes teachers believe that they have done a great job teaching a concept, and then a student says something that lets them know that their students don’t understand the concept at all!
I have found this to be VERY true with students’ understanding of the organizational structure of good writing. It can be eye-opening to ask students what a main idea is! Whatever you do, don’t ask your students what a topic sentence, a paragraph, an introduction, a conclusion, or paragraph form are. You may be shocked.
Actually, I’ll be quite frank here—it doesn’t matter what your students’ answers are. Being able to explain what these concepts are is not that important when it comes to writing well. When it comes to the skill of writing, that’s not how you show understanding. In fact, being able to explain all of these organizational concepts could be considered the booby prize, as writing is a skill. In baseball, home run hitters don’t need to understand how to hit a home run—they just need to be able to hit one.
The truth is that we want our students to understand these concepts because we want them to be able to apply them in their writing. When students understand organization in writing, they will demonstrate their understanding by applying organizational concepts to their writing. In other words, they will show their understanding by creating nicely organized writing.
Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay does have aspects that are traditional; however, there are many parts of the program that simply rely on pattern. “Just do this. Follow this pattern. What do you think?” One thing is certain: you have never seen anything quite like Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay.
Does this method work? Yes! And it works FAST! When it comes to getting ideas and organizing ideas, you will have a classroom full of home run hitters in no time! Your students will say, “I get it! I finally get it! I can’t even read what I was writing before!” Paul B. Diederich and Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay both agree that ideas and organization are more important than Voice when it comes to teaching beginning writers and struggling writers how to write. Create writing success today—and then build on it!
