This is the first thing students must address before writing: what it is they're writing about. Students need clear ideas, and to create ideas, they can make a list and reflect upon their interests and knowledge. As well, students need clear details in their writing, the things that help a reader understand what the writer is discussing. For example: "I enjoy music." A reader needs details, such as what kinds of music and why the writer likes music.
Good writing needs to be organized. In this step, students organize their writing. Every piece of writing needs a strong opener. As well, from there the writing should follow in a logical way so a reader can understand and follow what is happening. Finally, writing should have a strong conclusion, so it sums up the ideas and leaves the reader thinking about the paper. Students can complete this step by making a list of what ideas they want to cover in their papers, as well as what the introduction and conclusion should contain, and then organizing those ideas so they follow logically from one idea to the next.
In the voice part of the writing process, the writer infuses his voice into his writing. It makes the writing sound real and like that person. A writer might not be able to identify his voice until he's written several things. However, students can begin learning voice by reading things and identifying the voice a reader has. For example, read two pieces of writing that are different, and have students compare and contrast the voice style.
Good writing uses good words. These words draw us into a piece of writing and make it come alive. Students can learn word choice by finding synonyms for words that seem boring in their writing or someone else's writing. A thesaurus can help. Take a sentence like, "Tacos are good" and rewrite it as, "Tacos are yummy," "Tacos make for a mouth-watering dinner" or something else that has more interesting word choices.
Sentences should flow well throughout a student's paper. This means varying sentence length, using transitional words and creating a pleasing rhythm. Students can learn sentence fluency by reading and listening to poetry, which often has strong sentence fluency. Students should also read their writing out loud and see if it sounds smooth throughout.
Conventions include proper spelling and grammar. Students must learn grammar and spelling rules to master conventions. Messy conventions make a messy paper. Students can learn conventions by editing their own writing, as well as writing created by the teacher or classmates. Through lessons and repeated practice, conventions become more familiar, and a student can apply them to his paper.
Presentation was added to the original 6 Trait Writing model, as it encompasses the look of a piece of writing. For writing to be successful, it should be visually appealing, too. This means balancing the amount of black text and white space on a page, as well as graphics, pictures and other visuals. Bad presentation causes readers to put down a piece before even starting to read. To learn this, students can look at a piece of writing without reading it, and get practice understanding which pieces look good and which look daunting or not like an enjoyable read.