Designed by teachers and educators at the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, the 6+1 Trait® Writing Model of Instruction & Assessment organizes writing skills into seven “traits” that provide a common language for writing instruction.

The traits are:

1. Ideas
2. Organization
3. Voice
4. Word Choice
5. Sentence Fluency
6. Conventions
7. Presentation

Using these traits can help students see techniques of great writing, as well as take action to build specific skills that improve their writing.

Here are ways you can use Wixie to help students practice and support skills building for each of the traits.

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Third grade students work on developing an understanding of multiplication, division, and fractions. They are also beginning to grasp the properties of different geometric structures and how to analyze two-dimensional shapes.

Wixie's Templates library includes over 40 templates you can use for formative assessment purposes or as performance tasks your 3rd-grade learners can complete independently or in station rotations.

Teachers can assign Wixie activities directly to students, or customize to differentiate them for specific learners in their classroom. Instructions for students show in the Wixie interface to help them begin to work independently.

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Fact:  10% of students enrolled in our schools today are second language learners.
Fact:  ELL’s need to spend at least 50% of their instructional time “producing” oral language.
Fact:  ELL students will be included in standardized testing requirements in the majority of the states.

With these facts in mind, how do you start preparing students for learning in another language in a meaningful and deep way as new standards propose?

I am not a language acquisition expert, but my experience teaching in a bilingual classroom and supporting educational technology has allowed me to see many successful learning strategies used with ELL's. Wixie makes it easy to help your language learners master content and reach your curriculum standards.

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Did you know that if your child is using Wixie at school, they can also log in at home? Wixie provides many ways to bring learning home, while avoiding worksheet, or workbook, style activities. 

In the classroom, students use Wixie to combine text, images, voice narration and original artwork to write stories and show what they know for a range of projects. But when Wixie opens to a blank screen at home, many parents (although not many kids), can be intimidated by that white page! 

Here are some ideas to help you and your child get started using Wixie at home. 

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Wixie provides students with a digital canvas they can use to share ideas and communicate their understanding. Wixie works online so it is easy to share student work and give families a window into their child's classroom learning. 

Depending on how you want to share, you can:

• embed student projects on your classroom or school website,
• email parents a direct link to a student project,
• empower students with the knowledge and skills to log in when they are away from school.

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