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Writing
The Gold Standard
of Writing Instruction
and Assessment
By Lois Bridges, Ph.D.
 Traits Writing:
The Gold Standard of Writing
Instruction and Assessment
If students are to learn, they must write.
~ National Commission on Writing

With the advent of the Internet, written communication goes on apparently without interruption, and
words are more vital than ever in our day-to-day lives and everyday transactions, especially as written
material arrives in illuminated flashes via ubiquitous media unheard of even five years ago. Consider this:

• 1,052,803 books were published in 2009—up from 247,777 in 2002—a 325 percent
increase (Bowker 2010).
• 107 trillion emails were launched on the Internet in 2010.
• 255 million websites now dot the Internet—after 21.4 million were added in 2010!
• 25 billion tweets took flight on Twitter in 2010.
• 600 million people cohabit on Facebook. (Pingdom, 2011)

Wanted: Skilled Writers

As the National Commission on Writing makes clear, “Writing today is not a frill for the few, but an
essential skill for many” (2003). And the contexts for writing are expanding. We write more than ever for
multiple purposes across a wide range of media. Writing in the 21st century, dominated by technology,
is “defined by its frequency and efficiency, and modern writers must express ideas in ways that enable
them to communicate effectively to many audiences” (NAEP Writing Framework, 2011). What used to
be accomplished face to face or over the phone is now more likely addressed through an email, making
the ability to write well more important than ever. Indeed, for corporate America, masterful writing has
become a coveted skill—a skill not, however, easily found in new hires, as evident in a survey of 120
American corporations and in reports that assess student writing proficiency:

• Writing remediation costs American businesses as much as $3.1 billion annually

(National Commission on Writing, 2004).

2 Traits Writing: The Gold Standard of Writing Instruction and Assessment

 • About half of private employers and more than 60 percent of state government
employers say writing skills impact promotion decisions (National Commission on
Writing, 2004, 2005).
• Poorly written applications are likely to doom candidates’ chances for employment
(National Commission on Writing, 2005, p. 4).
• Thirty-five percent of high school graduates in college and 38 percent of high school
graduates in the workforce feel their writing does not meet expectations for quality
(Achieve, Inc., 2005).

As summed up by Susan Traiman, a director at the Business Roundtable, an association of leading chief
executives whose corporations were surveyed in the study, the problem shows up not only in email but
also in reports and other texts. “It’s not that companies want to hire Tolstoy,” said Traiman, “but they need
people who can write clearly, and many employees and applicants fall short of that standard” (Dillon,
2004).

The writing challenge often starts well before students are applying for their first job; they may encounter
trouble as soon as they land in college, arriving without the basic academic skills needed for success.
Researchers from the Manhattan Institute Center for Civic Policy found that only 32 percent of students
leave high school academically prepared for college (Greene & Foster, 2003), and this percentage is even
lower among African-American and Hispanic students (20 percent and 16 percent, respectively). These
figures are especially troubling because these students are likely to need writing remediation in college.
What’s more, they are less likely to complete their degree than classmates who enter with stronger literacy
skills. And surviving in today’s “knowledge age” (Trilling and Fadel, 2009) without a college degree adds to
the challenge of finding meaningful work.

What We’re Doing Wrong

As we might expect, the roots of the challenge may well lie in school writing instruction—either its
absence or, if not applied well, its presence. The 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)
reports steady gains over the past 15 years in the number of eighth graders moving from below proficient
to basic; however, students have not moved significantly from basic to proficient. Indeed, only one writer
in a hundred achieved the distinction of advanced. Multiple studies outline the problem:

• Work sheets and prompts still dominate even though we know they do not lead to
thoughtful, complex prose. Indeed, they serve to reinforce the notion that writing is a
simple task with one primary purpose: write to satisfy the teacher (Graham & Perin, 2007;
National Commission on Writing, 2003).
• The total time students spend writing is equal to about 15 percent of the time they
spend watching television (Graham & Perin, 2007). The Neglected R report from the
National Commission on Writing makes this recommendation: “Double the amount
of time most students spend writing and require successful completion of a course in
writing theory and practice as a condition of teacher licensing” (2003, p. 3).
• Teachers are bombarded daily by local, state, and federal demands, sometimes at odds
with each other. We need an “integrated system of standards, curriculum, instruction,
and assessment” —one that “makes room for writing as a key instructional strategy in all
subject areas while clearly communicating high expectations for student performance”
(National Commission on Writing, 2006, p.19). The Common Core Standards represent a
first step toward achieving this national goal.

[Link]/traitswriting 3
 The Writing Trait Model: Research Proven
More than ever, strong, vigorous writing is essential to American productivity and an engaged, intelligent
citizenry. No surprise, then, that The Writing Framework for the 2011 National Assessment of Educational
Progress defines writing as “A purposeful act of thinking and expression used to accomplish many different
goals” (p. v). For those of us entrusted with fostering new generations of capable and confident writers,
we want to make sure that every instructional moment is grounded in sound research and the Common
Core State Standards, the state-led effort to establish a single set of clear educational standards aimed at
providing students nationwide with a high-quality education. Our goal as teachers is nothing less than
helping students become skilled, flexible writers who know their way around a persuasive essay, inspired
narrative, or expository piece brimming with convincing facts and details. Indeed, the 2011 NAEP Writing
Assessment will evaluate students’ ability to “achieve three purposes common to writing in school and
in the workplace (the three modes of writing): to persuade; to explain; and to convey experience, real or
imagined” (NAEP Writing Framework, 2011).

To this end, we can turn with confidence to more than two decades of convincing research undergirding
the Trait Model of Writing, now widely regarded as the gold standard of classroom-based analytic writing
assessment and targeted writing instruction. With the Trait Model, teachers and students alike are
supported by a continuous teaching-assessing loop.

The Research Behind the Writing Traits

For more than two decades, the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (now known as Education
Northwest) and other researchers have studied the effectiveness of the Trait Model and the professional
development tools used to train the teachers who use it. In a nutshell, the traits represent the essential
elements of writing inherent in all extended written communication: ideas, organization, word choice,
sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation. Educators who use the Trait Model center both their
instruction and their assessment on helping students understand how these elements work together and
interact to create a well-written, cohesive piece that accomplishes the writer’s goal. Multiple researchers
have studied the efficacy of the Trait Model in both large- and small-scale studies:

1. A definitive five-year study about the traits of writing is being conducted by Education
Northwest, Portland, Oregon, and will be published by the Department of Education, IES
(Institute of Education Science) in 2011. The goal of this study is to provide high-quality
evidence on the effectiveness of the analytical trait-based model for increasing student
achievement in writing.
2. In a study conducted by Nauman, Stirling, and Borthwick (2011), the researchers
examined the alignment between teachers’ underlying attitudes and beliefs about good
writing and their assessment and teaching of writing. They found that teachers who
value conventions more than other aspects of writing put more weight on conventions
in their assessment of student work, while teachers who value creativity and risk-taking
tend to reward young writers who exhibit those qualities. The researchers concluded
that although values varied, schools were consistent in embracing a standardized
method or model of instruction, such as the Trait Model.
3. Kozlow and Bellamy (2004) examined the effects of professional development for
teachers using the Trait Model and the extent to which the training influenced
students’ writing skills. The researchers found that after only a short workshop, teachers
understood and were able to implement the model. Teachers also reported that their
students understood and were able to apply the traits they taught. The researchers
did note, however, that a more robust form of professional development than a short
workshop would have had a stronger impact on classroom practice.

4 Traits Writing: The Gold Standard of Writing Instruction and Assessment

 4. Coe (2000) demonstrated that writing trait assessments are useful to identify students
who might have difficulty on state writing tests and who therefore need extra writing
instruction. For example, Coe found that students in the state of Washington who had
low scores on district-administered Writing Trait assessments were likely to also have
low scores on the writing portion of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning
(WASL).
5. Arter,
100%
Spandel, Culham, and Pollard (1994) asked: Does the writing of students who have
direct instruction on 93%assessing90%
writing using the six-trait
87% 89%analytical87%
model improve more
90% 86%
than that of students who do not have79% such instruction? The researchers discovered
that
80% students’ 73%
scores increased in direct proportion to the amount of instructional and
practice
70% time spent on a trait
64%and the order in which the traits were taught (meaning
63%
the earlier
60%
a trait was taught, the better students were
59% able to59%
apply it because of the
increased amount of time and guidance they received). The study showed that when we
50%
focus on the criteria of quality writing—the traits—students show wider overall growth
in 40%
writing.
30%
6. Additional small-scale studies highlighting the effectiveness of the Trait Model are also available.
Most 20% of these studies examined the use of the traits in one school district, one grade, or one

classroom.
10% All the studies show increases in student writing performance (Jarmer et al., 2000;
Bellamy,
0%
2000). Note the promising test results for six traits in the data from Blue Springs District,
just outside Kansas City, MO. Approximately 950 students in kindergarten through second grade
in 13 Blue Springs elementary schools were tested in the fall and again in the spring on their
understanding of the six traits: Ideas, Organization, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, Voice, and
Conventions. In applying all six traits, as Deputy Superintendent Annette Seago effused, the K–2
students made “phenomenal growth” (2011). The proof is in the numbers. In the fall, for example,
100% 96%
when the test was first administered,
93% only 14 second91%
graders demonstrated an outstanding
88% 87% 86%manner, in the
grasp
90% of Ideas; by spring that number had shot up to 262 students. In a similar
fall,
80% 10 second graders scored outstanding on Organization; 17 on Conventions. In the spring,
after
70%
immersion in the six traits, those numbers shifted dramatically up: 229 and 222 students
respectively. Overall, after a yearlong intensive traits writing program with Dr. Ruth Culham,
60%
the district’s primary students demonstrated significant writing growth across the six traits. For
example,
50% in the
42%fall, just 27percent of the Blue Springs District 790 first graders were at or above
grade
40% level in their ability to effectively organize their own written compositions (organization
is30%one of the hardest traits for every writer, young29% 30%to master); by spring, that
and old alike,
27%
percentage had surged to 93percent (864 first graders were tested). 17%
20% 15%
10%

Kindergarten:
0% Percentage at Grade Level and Above, Fall and Spring
100%
Fall
90%
Spring
80%
73% 73%
Percentage of Students

70%

60% 55%
51% 51%
50%
48%

40%

30%

20%

10%
2% 1% 1% 2% 1% 0%
0%
Ideas Organzation Voice Word Choice Sentence Conventions
Fluency

[Link]/traitswriting 5
 20%

10%

0%

First Grade: Percentage at Grade Level and Above, Fall and Spring
100% 96%
93% 91%
90%
88% 87% 86% Fall
Spring
80%

Percentage of Students
70%

60%

50%
42%
40%
29% 30%
30% 27%

20% 15% 17%

10%

0%
Ideas Organzation Voice Word Choice Sentence Conventions
100% Fluency

90%
Second Grade: Percentage at Grade Level and Above, Fall and Spring
100%80% 73% 73%
93% 90%
87% 89% 87%
90%70% 86% Fall
55% 79% Spring
80%60% 73% 51% 51%
48%
Percentage of Students

70%50% 64% 63%

59% 59%
60%40%

50%30%

40%20%

30%10% 2%
2% 1% 1% 1% 0%
20%0%

10%

0%
Ideas Organzation Voice Word Choice Sentence Conventions
Fluency
“Grade level and above” refers to those students who scored a 3, 4, or 5 on the Primary Traits Scoring Guide (Culham, 2005).

Why the Trait Model Works

100%

90%
96%
93%
88%
91%
87% 86%
Consider these
80% explanations of quality writing—and how to achieve it—from four experts on the topic:

70%
An effective piece of writing is produced by a craft. It is simply a matter of working back and
forth
60% between focus, form, and voice until the meaning is discovered and made clear.

~Donald
50% Murray
42%
Good writing
40% isn’t forged by magic or hatched out of thin air. Good writing happens when
29% 30%
human
30% 27% steps to take control of their sentences—to make their
beings follow particular
words
20% do what they want them to do. 15%
~Ralph Fletche 17%

Good writing
10% has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the
next0% … write with clarity, simplicity, brevity, usage, voice, and the elimination of clutter.
~William Zinsser
100%
Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary
90%
words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should
have80%no unnecessary73%
lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. ~William Strunk, Jr.
73%
70%

60% 55%
51% 51%
6 50%
48%
Traits Writing: The Gold Standard of Writing Instruction and Assessment
40%

30%
All four explanations reflect an emphasis on the writer’s control over the essential elements (or traits) of
writing—control informed by the logic of thinking, insight shaped by knowledge of topic, skill bolstered
by experience, and, always, a final composition achieved through diligence and determination. Creating
writing that hits the mark is hard work. It may be easy to believe that only those born to be writers can
really write—and the rest of us can’t. In fact, though, even those with their share of natural talent pursue
writing as they would any challenging project—deliberately and methodically, with a vision of the final
goal and tight control over the traits alluded to above: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence
fluency, conventions, and presentation. It only makes sense, then, to teach our students about these
critical building blocks of writing: what they are, how they work together, and how to control them
effectively to create exemplary writing.

Given the paramount importance of the traits of writing, it shouldn’t surprise us that the 2011 NAEP
Writing Assessment Framework will test students on three broad domains—1) Development of Ideas,
2) Organization of Ideas, 3) Language Facility and Conventions—and the essential features within each
domain, which coincide precisely with the traits of writing and their key qualities, as developed by writing
expert Dr. Ruth Culham (Scholastic, 2011).

2011 NAEP Writing

Criteria for Evaluating
Student Responses Traits Writing: Chart Of Traits & Qualities
Development of ideas is effective Ideas
in relation to the writer’s purpose Finding a Topic
and audience.
Developing the Topic
• Depth and complexity
Focusing the Topic
• Approaches to thinking Using Details
and writing
• Details and examples

Organization is logical in relation Organization

to the writer’s purpose and Creating the Lead
audience. Using Sequence Words and Transition Words
• Text structure Structuring the Body
• Coherence Ending With a Sense of Resolution
• Focus

Language facility and conventions Voice

support clarity of expression and Establishing a Tone Creating a Connection to the Audience
the effectiveness of the writing in Conveying the Purpose Taking Risks to Create Voice
relation to the writer’s purpose and
Word Choice
audience.
Applying Strong Verbs Using Specific and Accurate Words
• Sentence structure Selecting Choosing Words That Deepen
and sentence variety Striking Words Meaning and Phrases
• Word choice
Sentence Fluency
• Voice and tone Crafting Well-Build Sentences Capturing Smooth and Rhythmic Flow
• Grammar, usage, and Varying Sentence Types Breaking the “Rules” to Create Fluency
mechanics (capitalization,
punctuation, and spelling) Conventions
Checking Spelling Capitalizing Correctly
Punctuating Effectively Applying Grammar and Usage

[Link]/traitswriting 7
 A Writing Revolution: The Instructional
and Assessment Breakthrough
The great breakthrough in writing instruction and assessment—showcased in Ruth Culham’s Traits Writing
(Scholastic 2011)—is that we now understand how to teach writing in ways that enable all students to
become skilled, effective, and thoughtful writers. Traits Writing:

• breaks the traits down into their component qualities and presents them in manageable,
spiraled packets of information.

• helps teachers and students read and discuss strong examples of what each quality
looks like in exemplary works of fiction and nonfiction.

• encourages writing in the three most common modes (purposes) of writing: expository,
narrative, and persuasive.

• shares the common language of writing—made available through the traits and the
qualities of the traits—to help students understand what’s working in their writing and
what’s not.

• targets the specific skills students need to improve their writing and give them time to
practice those skills by writing on topics that matter to them.

Culham’s Traits Writing takes the guesswork out of teaching and assessing. The instructional clarity it
provides—together with the common language to talk about writing and mentors to show the way—
make it an extraordinarily effective system for both assessing and teaching writing.

Full-Circle Support
Switching gears for a moment, consider The Bike Kitchen, a nonprofit bicycle repair organization, housed in
a cavernous San Francisco garage filled with bike parts, bike tools, and bikes in various stages of becoming.
Here, bicyclists can find both tools and expert bike mechanics who volunteer their time showing others
how to fix their existing bikes or build brand new ones. Step inside and you’re instantly surrounded by the
language of bicycles and bike repair: gears, chains, derailleurs. Expert and novice, master and apprentice
work side by side, immersed in the craft of bike building and repair, one modeling for the other, then inviting
the novice to try with guidance. The conversation is spirited, the work focused, and the goal, always, is quality.
You don’t want to point your bike down Filbert Street (one of the steepest navigable streets in the western
hemisphere) and discover halfway down that your back brakes don’t work!

The Bike Kitchen provides a spot-on analogy for the kind of classroom we want for our students as we
strive to help them understand good writing and craft their own. The effective writing classroom embraces
three big ideas about what developing writers (and bicyclists!) need:

• a common language to shape and guide the work at hand

• mentors who model and encourage
• an understanding of what constitutes quality provided
by expert feedback and self-assessment

All three are at the heart of Traits Writing. Let’s consider each one in turn.

8 Traits Writing: The Gold Standard of Writing Instruction and Assessment

Let’s Talk Writing! The Importance
of Sharing a Common Language
Writing is hugely complex and involves the simultaneous orchestration of dozens of moving parts, each
attached to dozens more. And it often feels somewhat mysterious—a piece that can inspire or infuriate,
enchant or endear arises from a blank screen or sheet of paper. How do you teach young students about
something as abstract as “ideas” or “organization”? The question becomes even more challenging when we
consider the fact that many teachers, due to lack of time or interest, don’t write much beyond letters home
to parents, emails to colleagues, or lesson plans for principals. They don’t wrestle daily with the exacting
work of writing beyond the demands of these perfunctory writing tasks. How then to explain to one’s
students the kind of mental acrobatics needed to write, say, a sizzling persuasive essay?

A shared vocabulary offers the entry point. Just as the novice enters the Bike Kitchen and learns the
language of bike forks and gear cables, teachers and students enter Traits Writing and learn the language
of writing. Ruth Culham explains:
The traits are an assessment model that over twenty years of development and
implementation has found its way into the lexicon of many, many writing teachers.
Acknowledging that using a shared vocabulary can be helpful across the grades and
over time, these teachers find the traits easy to understand and blend into their writing
program—be it highly structured or more informal (2011, p. 220).

Just knowing how to talk about writing makes all the difference. As Education Northwest sums up:
By stepping back and reflecting upon how writing includes thinking, listening, reading,
planning, speaking, and drawing, we can see all sorts of possibilities for using the trait
language with our youngest learners. We teach our children and ourselves what rubrics
are and how to use them in many aspects of their learning and our teaching. If we focus
on the language of writing, the common language, then together, K–12, students and
teachers alike will come to truly understand the skills required to become a strong
writer while working through the process of writing ([Link]
resource/464).

Writing Mentors:
Showing Us the Way to Quality Writing
The Bike Kitchen wouldn’t exist if not for the kindhearted, generous bike experts who volunteer their time
day after day, week after week to help others build and repair bikes. It’s the best of the apprenticeship
model—bike expert demonstrates in nonjudgmental, encouraging way; bike novice gives it a go.

And it’s the collaborative apprenticeship model (Collins, Brown, Newman, 1989), our most effective way
of teaching and learning, that’s at play in the effective writing classroom. In a Traits Writing classroom,
we find multiple mentors—both the teacher and the works of expert writers that surround the students
on the bookshelves. That’s right! When summoned—from every book, every written text—authors, both
living and not, offer novice writers lessons on every aspect of writing. As literacy researcher Frank Smith
(1988) said more than 20 years ago: “Every time we open a book we get a lesson on writing”— how to
frame and open a piece, choose a mode to meet our purpose for writing, select just-right words, infuse the
piece with voice—all the elements that make writing spirited and a pleasure to read are available in the
pages of published work. These so-called Mentor Texts, defined by Dorfan and Cappelli (2007) as “pieces
of literature that we can return to again and again as we help our young writers learn how to do what

[Link]/traitswriting 9
 they may not yet be able to do on their own” (p. 2) teach our students what quality writing looks like and
sounds like.

Susan Cooper, Newbery medal winner and perhaps best known for the series The Dark Is Rising, explains:

Every writer’s life has been molded by certain key books, read when young. Mine were
Kipling’s Jungle Books, Stevenson’s poems, the novels of E. Nesbit, Arthur Ransome,
Charles Dickens… At least I think they were. The truth is that every book we read, like
very person we meet, has the capacity to change our lives. And though we can be sure
our children will meet people, we must, must create, these days, their chance to meet
books (1994).

And here, research meets literary insights: Graham and Dolores Perin, authors of Writing Next: Effective
Strategies to Improve Writing of Adolescents in Middle and High Schools (2007), a report that outlines
what’s needed to bring all students up to grade level, note the pivotal relationship between reading and
writing by identifying 11 essential elements that help students learn to write. Number ten on their list is
“study of models,” which urges teachers to provide students with opportunities to review and learn from
models of exemplary writing. How might this be accomplished? The authors explain: “The study of models
provides students with good models for each type of writing that is the focus of instruction. Students
are encouraged to analyze these examples and to emulate the critical elements, patterns, and forms
embodied in the models in their own writing” (p. 20).

This just seems to be common sense; nearly everything we do in life we learn by emulating the models
that surround us—whether we are learning to set the table for dinner, build our own road bike, or craft an
essay for a college application—we learn by watching others do what we must try and do ourselves.

Getting at the
Heart of Quality Writing
In a Traits Writing classroom, teachers are encouraged to expose students to multiple mentors—not
only to published authors, but also to fellow students. Every key quality is showcased by student-written
benchmark papers that students assess for their application of the key quality. Students don’t have to
guess what they are aiming to accomplish—they can refer to a clear example of writing that works; plus,
the teacher delivers a Focus Lesson that spells out exactly what must be done to apply the quality skillfully.
Nothing is left to chance: Helping students understand what we mean by “quality” writing is too important
not to address directly and explicitly. We show students exactly what we mean so they can work toward
creating quality writing themselves. As Ruth Culham (2011) explains, “Writers use reading for inspiration.
They mine their reading, and as they sluice the sludge from gold and precious gemstones, they use what
they discover to adorn their own writing (p. 218).”

What About the Common Core State Standards?

Traits Writing is meticulously aligned to writing standards—specific state writing standards as well as those
included in the Common Core State Standards. The CCSS are divided into four categories, all addressed in
Traits Writing:
1. Text Types and Purposes
Center on the modes of writing—expository, narrative, and persuasive; at least two units
each year in the traits program explore and practice each mode

10 Traits Writing: The Gold Standard of Writing Instruction and Assessment

 2. Production and Distribution of Writing
Feature revising (traits: ideas, organization, word choice, voice, sentence fluency), editing
(trait: conventions) and publication of work using technology (trait: presentation). All
seven traits are covered within these standards.
3. Research to Build Writing
Promote learning to write; throughout the traits program, students write to demonstrate
learning (using information collected from multiple sources) and to express opinions and
ideas about texts read (supporting textual evidence).
4. Range of Writing
Require short- and long-term writing projects. Each week in Traits Writing, students write
smaller pieces as well as work on their mode-specific unit project.

Analytic Writing Assessment:

Helping Students Understand Their
Own Writing Strengths and Challenges
Helping our students discover themselves as writers who possess the control and confidence to craft clear,
concise writing is our clarion call as educators. We know our students are powerful language users. Every
day, in the hallways of our schools (and perhaps too often in class) we hear examples of our students’
language virtuosity, switching register every few minutes depending on what they are talking about and
to whom (e.g., brash, bold bantering with their peers over lunch; a deferential tone when approached
by the principal). How can we harness their authentic voices and help our students create equally potent
written pieces? What’s needed to channel their strong, engaging oral language into writing that sings?

To this end, we might ask, what makes writing good? How do we know when a piece of writing is
exemplary, and furthermore, how do we help our students understand and emulate such a piece so
they can craft their own fine writing? One of the greatest weaknesses in our writing instruction thus
far is that too often students (and often their teachers) simply don’t know what they are aiming for. It’s
akin to spelunking inside a dark cave without a headlamp to light the way. Enter the traits and their key
qualities—a model that illuminates writing and its guideposts (prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and
finishing/publishing). The Trait Model points the way to competent writing and minimizes stumbles and
spills along the way.

The Great Value of an Analytic Stance

Analytic assessment is individualized, focused, and precise, because it requires us to look at writing from
multiple perspectives. Like scorers of holistic assessment, those who engage in analytic assessment use
a rubric or scoring guide. But they use the rubrics and scoring guides to determine multiple scores for
a piece of writing, rather than just one. In Traits Writing, both teacher and student consider 28 different
information points (seven traits times four key qualities) as they work to assess papers using the six-point
scoring guide for each trait:

The Scoring Guides’ Six Performance Levels*

6. Exceptional: the piece exceeds expectations in this trait. It really works well. There is no
need for revision or editing unless the writer wants to push further into new territory.

[Link]/traitswriting 11
 5. Strong: The piece is good and strong. It stands on its own. It may need a bit of revision or
editing, but nothing the writer can’t handle on his or her own.
4. Refining: The piece has more strengths than weaknesses in the trait. A moderate
amount of revision and editing is needed. Papers that score a 4 are often considered
“proficient,” which means they meet most state and local standards.
3. Developing: The piece has slightly more weaknesses than strengths in this trait. Some
revision and editing is needed throughout.
2. Emerging: The piece hints at what the writer might do with the trait. Extensive revision
and editing are required.
1. Rudimentary: The piece does not contain the core features of any of the key qualities for
this trait. The writer may wish to start over or abandon the piece completely.
* for Grades 3-8; performance levels for Grades K–2 are Exceptional, Established, Extending, Expanding, Exploring, and Emergent.

In the process of working to assign scores for each trait, students and teachers simultaneously learn the
“language of writing,” the components of effective writing, and what’s needed to draw together and
orchestrate all the moving parts—everything from a rich knowledge of the topic, to the corresponding
vocabulary that describes the topic, to the mastery of the conventions such as spelling, grammar, and
punctuation needed to describe and present the topic. Again, it takes the guesswork out of both teaching
and learning. Teachers and students use the same language to draw from the same set of understandings.

What Writing Does for Us

As educators, we sometimes distinguish between learning to write and writing to learn. In some common-
sense way, the two seem different. As our students are learning to write, they are concentrating hard on
learning how to make wise choices—even a brand new writer is faced with countless decisions about
how to use nearly every aspect of written language, both global (meaning and structure) and particular
(language conventions). Writing to learn, on the other hand, provides an opportunity for students
to use writing as a tool: 1) to dig their way into the meaning of a text, strengthening and deepening
comprehension (Harvey & Daniels, 2010; Tatum, 2010); or 2) to learn subject matter (Lane, 2008; Gallagher
& Lee, 2008). In fact, learning to write and writing to learn are interdependent. The ability to write well is
essential for all aspects of our lives—in school and out. And increasingly, it’s even tied up in the economic
health of the country, prompting this statement from the NAEP Writing Framework:

Americans in the 21st century need to … communicate in a variety of forms and mediums,
create texts under the constraints of time, and play a productive role in an economy that
increasingly values knowledge and information. The pace of written communication in
today’s environment— the velocity of writing—reflects the transition to an information-
based economy built on speed, efficiency, and complexity” (NAEP, 2011, p. 1).

The Traits: A Lifeline to Learning

Writing is complex. Whether we are learning to listen for our voice in the first personal narrative we’ve
ever attempted, or documenting our research of metabolic systems, we are engaging in extraordinarily
complicated cognitive processes. But teaching and assessing writing need not be complicated. Traits
Writing provides the framework and strategies, mentors and resources, that point the way to writing
instruction and assessment that are smart, streamlined, and aligned with Common Core Standards and
the Writing Framework for the National Assessment of Educational Progress. And for the individual teacher
and student, the traits are nothing less than a lifeline to magnificent learning possibilities—as well as to
the tremendous satisfaction and advantages that come from learning to write well.

12 Traits Writing: The Gold Standard of Writing Instruction and Assessment

References
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Culham, R. (2011). Traits writing. New York: Scholastic.

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[Link]/traitswriting 13
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