This page is designed to offer some suggestions about how you can reinforce the Six Traits at home.  This are some of the same strategies teachers use in their classrooms on a daily basis so do not be surprised if your child says, "Hey we do that in class!"

Underneath each trait you will find some books that can be used to reinforce each of the traits.  Many of the books listed can be found in the South Mountain Library, others will need to be purchased or checked out from one of the public areas. 

Jump into the suggestions and have fun with your child!  Remember writing is an exciting process!

                        IDEAS                   

• Make lists of things to write about from ideas found in picture books

• Compare the way two authors write about the same ideas

• Count the number of words in the average picture book and discuss how long it really takes to tell a story or explain an idea well.

• List topics that seem too big, trite, or overused and look for ways authors of picture books have handled these topics well

• Select a topic from a content area class and create a picture book to teach someone else what has been learned.

Books that can be used to teach IDEAS

• Miss Nelson Is Back, Harry Allard

• Kofi and His Magic, Maya Angelou

• The Important Book, Margaret Wise Brown

• The Armadillo from Amarillo, Lynne Cherry

• Magic Schoolbus (Series), Joanna Cole

• On the Day You Were Born, Debra Frasier

• Roxaboxen, Alice McLerran

• Three Stories You Can Read, Sara Swan Miller

ORGANIZATION

• Write the story to wordless picture books and highlight the lead, transitional words, sequence patterns and the conclusion.

• Create a set of the best openings found in picture books.

• Create a set of the best conclusions found in picture books.

• Write a student-friendly set of guidelines for how to write good openings and conclusions from the examples found.

• Write a new ending to one of the picture books.

• Write a new picture book using the A to Z format on a topic from the current curriculum.

Books that can be used to teach ORGANIZATION

• It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, Janet Ahlberg

• Comet's Nine Lives, Jan Brett

• Little House, Her Story, Virginia L. Burton

• Legend of the Blue Bonnet, Torrie DePaola

• Rotten Ralph, Jack Gantos

• Coming to America, Betsy Maestro

• The Frog Princess, Pamela Man

VOICE

• Compare the voices of two different authors exploring the same topic or idea.

• After reading a variety of different picture books, make a list of all the words that can describe voice - angry, passionate, thoughtful, considerate, loving, mean-spirited, charming, eloquent, etc.

• Play "Hearing Voices" by reading passages from familiar authors' works and matching their style to their books.

• Make a list of places where you notice voice making a difference . . .

                the type of books/print you like to read (what kind of voice is it?)

                the things that you don't like to read (what kind of voice is it?)

• Pick a famous person and explain an important concept or idea to them in picture book format.

Books that can be used to teach VOICE

• Fly Away Home, Eve Bunting

• Stellaluna, Janell Cannon

• The Fourth Little Pig, Teresa Celsi

• Sadako, Eleanor Coerr

• The Twits, Roald Dahl

• Gift of the Sacred Dog, Paul Gobel

• I Am the Dog, I Am the Cat, Donald Hall

• Leo the Magnificent, Ann M. Martin

• Guess How Much I Love You, Sam McBratney

• Koko's Kitten, Dr. Francine Patterson

• Stinky Cheese Man and Other F, Jon Scieszka

• The Story of the Three Little Pigs, Jon Scieszka

• Somebody and the Three Blairs, Marilyn Tolhurst

WORD CHOICE

• Make a list of phrases or words that are particularly striking that you find in picture books.

• Highlight all the active verbs found in favorite picture books.

• Examine the proportion of types of words found in picture books . . .

                How many verbs?

                How many nouns?

                How many adjectives and adverbs?

• Discuss the different word choice techniques picture book authors use to create picture in the mind.

• Write a picture book with blah, ordinary every day words - now rewrite it with colorful illustrative language (compare and contrast).

      Books that can be used to teach WORD CHOICE

• My Grandma Lives in Gooligulch, Graeme Base

• Four Famished Foxes and Fosdy, Pamela Duncan Edwards

• Snowballs, Lois Ehlert

• Possum Magic, Mern Fox

• Tough Boris, Mern Fox

• Chrysanthemum, Kevin Henkes

• Away from Home, Anita Lobel

• Goldilocks and the Three Hares, Heidi Petach

• The Whales, Cynthia Rylant

• Shrek!, William Steig

SENTENCE FLUENCY

• Read lots and lots of poetry picture books aloud and ask - "What makes language flow?"  Make a list of ideas and find examples of prose picture books with good fluency.

• Use choral reading as practice for where sentences and phrases begin and end, inflections, pauses etc.

• Type the text of a picture book without any sentence breaks and then rewrite it showing the natural fluency through sentences.

• Make a list of sentence beginnings that show variety.

• Read two or three picture books and count how many simple, compound, and complex sentences are in each.  Examine why some sentences work better in different sections of the text.

• Tell a story/explain a concept aloud before you try and write it.  Ask a partner to write down the beginnings of each of your sentences as you speak.

Books that can be used to teach SENTENCE FLUENCY

• Flower Garden, Eve Bunting

• Growtiger's Last Stand, T. S. Eliot

• Time for Bed, Mern Fox

• Wombat Divine, Mern Fox

• Slugs, David Greenberg,

• Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Bill Martin

• If I Were in Charge of the World, Judith Viorst

• A Visit to William Blake's Inn, Nancy Willard

CONVENTIONS

• Look at lots of picture books with an editor's eye.  Can you find any mistakes?

• Select several picture books that contain dialogue - do they follow the same convention rules?

• Make a list of the conventions that should be standard and another list of those things that the author can personally control.

• Deliberately make 5 spelling, 5 punctuation, 5 capitalization, 5 grammar/usage errors in your own picture book context and ask someone to find them and correct them. (They can correct other things they find, too!)

• Type your picture book onto the computer and use the spell checker and thesaurus options.  What do you have to know about conventions to make the best use of these tools?

Books that can be used to teach CONVENTIONS

• Come Away from the Water, John Burningham

• Behind the Mask, Ruth Heller

• A Book Takes Root, Michael Kehoe

• Amazing Pop-Up Grammar Book, Jenie Maizels

• If You Were a Writer, Joan Lowery Nixon

• From Pictures to Words, Janet Stevens