6 Traits Post-Its

If you've already started working with the Common Core Curriculum, you know the amount of required writing is increasing.  The biggest concern I hear from teachers is how they are going to find the time to grade all of the essays the Common Core requires.

I've often told teachers to only grade for one part of the essay (introductions, for instance) or one concept (transitions), however it is difficult for most English teachers to NOT grade the entire essay.  I found a great site this morning with a lovely little resource that just might help with grading.

Writingfix.com has a template for printing on Post-It notes.  They have a Post-It for each of the 6 Traits of Writing.  They have designed this to be used by the student to rank one statement about that particular trait against the others based on that one particular writing trait.  I'm not sure that I will have students rank each statement, as I think it is important that they do all of them.  Instead, I think I will change it so that the student or teacher can rate each statement on a scale of 1-5.  The templates on the Writing Fix page can be found by scrolling down until you see the bright colored Post-Its.  You then can print out 6 per page using their template.  You can find the templates by going here.  Writingfix.com has lots of great tools and resources to use in the classroom, so this is just one of many great things you will find on their website.

I am going to work on making something similar to these to use in my classroom, but I doubt I will print them on Post-Its.  I have almost 80 students, so printing them would be a time consuming and costly process.  I think I will make them so that I can run them off, cut them out and staple to the essay or writing piece.  I'll post back here when I come up with something.