Developed by a group of teachers during the early 1980's, this assessment resource provides a thorough, yet practical, way to evaluate student writing. The analytic rubric allows teachers to collect data about groups of students and identify the strengths and weaknesses of individual students. Writing is assessed using seven traits or characteristics of effective composition: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation. Teachers may elect to use all seven traits, or fewer, depending upon the assessment circumstance. While this resource links directly to the scoring rubric, additional information about this assessment may be accessed at About 6+1 Trait Writing. (author/ncl)

This site applies to all career clusters because good writing is important in every career for both interpersonal and intrapersonal communication. It provides a common ground on which both teachers and student writers can meet and understand the expectations of good writing and whether or not they are being met. When the standards of good writing are not being met, expectations for meeting these standards is clearly spelled out. This site helps take the guesswork out of writing for both novice writers and experienced writers who are grading student work because all involved know exactly what is being done correctly and incorrectly. (author/dm)