6+1 Traits of Writing

When I began really examining my students work and looking for big topics/themes that were present in their writing I decided to look specifically at 3 of the 6+1 Traits of Writing. I chose to look at sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation.

Below is the link to the rubric that I used for scoring my pieces.
http://educationnorthwest.org/webfm_send/1434

The three writing pieces that were closely examined throughout this study were all informational text so I felt that these three writing traits were the most fitting.

When looking at the rubric, the students in the study were considered to be in the "Emerging" stage prior to the study beginning. My hope was to see students move toward the "Capable" stage. My research shows how these students worked toward the capable stage both independently and in partner settings. I feel strongly based on my findings that the partner writing with the animal research books significantly helped the students once they had to do their second on-demand independent writing prompt.