The Writing Traits: Word Choice
helping your students "go deep" with owning their own words during classroom writing instruction
 The following introduction comes from the Northern Nevada Writing Project's Going Deep with 6 Trait Language Guide (click here for details on ordering this print resource):
In Nevada, word choice isn’t one of traits they score on our state writing assessment. Only four of the six traits are scored in Nevada. I’ve been asked why that is, and I do have an answer. Assessing for four traits is much cheaper than assessing for all six.
I was asked by a time-pressed teacher once, “So should we not even teach word choice then?” She was kidding. I was glad she was kidding. There was a long moment of silence when I wasn’t sure a joke had been presented by her question, but then she smiled, and we all laughed. Talking about state tests often brings out the cynical humor from our best teachers. I am one of those occasionally cyncial teachers too.
So I’ll cyncially ask you now, “Why teach word choice, if it’s not assessed on the state writing test?” Discuss!
Done discussing? Time for my two cents? Two reasons, from my perspective: One…it’s the most enjoyable writing trait to design mini-lessons around; perhaps that’s overly opinionated and thus debateable, but I am a lover of etymology, a celebrator of language’s sounds, and a self-proclaimed expert at making up brand new words when the word I want hasn’t quite been invented yet. Two…it’s the trait that—if you’re not quite sure how to teach your students to have a voice—well, it’s a safe place to begin; voice is the weirdest of all six traits—the easiest to spot in good writing, the hardest to teach a student to have.
I was lucky. I had voice long before I had an extensive enough vocabulary to practice true word choice. I was also a fast writer; I could whip out a pretty good rough draft in half the time of my classmates. Because of that, my sixth grade teacher once accidentally gave me a word choice lesson that sticks with me to this day. I was done writing. There were twenty-five long minutes left in that class. I was beginning to distract my neighbors. My teacher picked up a thesaurus and asked, “You ever used one of these before?” I had, with worksheets, but not ever when I was doing any real writing. I shook my and was told, “Find some uninteresting words in your draft and change them to better synomyns.”
Long-story-short, my draft became ridiculous. I can’t remember what my paper was about, but I distinctly remember changing the word meal into the word repast. That was just one tiny spot where I horribly squeezed my own voice from the draft. I did this throughout my paper before the bell rang, and the next day I noticed my paper didn’t feel like mine anymore. These weren’t my words; they belonged to the thesaurus. Lesson learned. Never forgotten.
Word choice, I told my own students many years later, is not about using big words to impress your teacher or to send your reader scrambling for a dictionary. Word choice is about writing with the words that you actually want to carry around in your pocket for conversation. “The trick is,” I told my students, “to never stop collecting. Life is about collecting new words that fit what you like to talk about. To prepare for my vocabulary/spelling test, practice using new words in conversation all week long; after the test is over, keep just the words that fit you by placing them in your pocket alongside your already-owned words, and use your new ones as often as you can. Scrap those words that aren’t yours until you study for your S.A.T. someday.”
Above all else, teach your kids to write using new words they really like. If they can write with an interesting word, and the writing still sounds like the way they talk, they have grown tremendously as a writer, and they’ll have one more “pocket word” to take them through life. And—believe it or not—they have begun to find new voice with a single words.
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Resources for Teaching Better Word Choice
WritingFix offers free-to-use and peruse resources on the following topics. Click a link below to see our entire collection of lessons and resources for each of these trait-based skills:
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What's Word Choice?
A writer thinks about these specific sub-skills when working on the trait of word choice during the writing process:
- The writer balances strong verbs with verbs that effectively and efficiently move a piece of writing to its conclusion
- The writer understands the importance of choosing interesting and memorable adjectives instead of just listing adjectives
- The writer effectively balances precise nouns with pronouns
- The writer takes risks with words, using new vocabulary words correctly and trying out interesting uses of familiar words
- If appropriate, the writer uses alliteration and assonance or other types of sound devices
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WritingFix's 6-Trait Poster Set
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WritingFix's Trait Post-Its
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Free Poster Resource for your Classroom:
WORD CHOICE—like the sun in the sky—can accomplish many things: comfort or sunburn, thirst or relaxation. The words you choose to include in your writing have profound impact on your reader.
This set of seven posters was created collectively by Dena Harrison, Mary Dunton, Nancy Thomas, Corbett Harrison, and Vivian Olds of the Northern Nevada Writing Project.
- Click here to open and print WritingFix's 7-page poster set, inspired by our "Building a House" metaphor.
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WritingFix offers a free template of Word Choice Post-It sized notes. These can either be printed on purple colored paper and cut out and stapled to students' drafts, or you can--if you dare--attempt to print them on real 3 x 3 Post-It Notes.
These Post-It Notes were created by Corbett Harrison of the Northern Nevada Writing Project.
- Click here to open and print a sheet of six word choice revision post-its.
- Click here to visit WritingFix's Post-It homepage, where you can find instruction on printing our post-its on actual Post-It notes.
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Building a 6-Trait Mentor Text library for your classroom or your school's library?
Six "Mentor Text" Suggestions for the Trait of Word Choice
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(Click here to access WritingFix's entire bibliography of cited picture books and chapter books.)
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Below are three word choice "mentor text" suggestions from the
WritingFix Website:
(Click the words lesson link after each suggestion below to access the lesson.) |
Below are three word choice "mentor text" suggestions from the
NNWP's Going Deep with 6 Trait Language Guide:
(Click here to find out how to order this awesome resource from the NNWP.) |
 1. Molly Grooms' We Are Bears shares interesting non-fiction facts about bears while using an interesting organizational technique: the text's parts are cleverly separated with precise and interesting nouns about bears: We are climbers, We are diggers, We are searchers. Assign an animal report to your students, asking them to conduct research that helps them find precise nouns about their animals: We are burrowers, We are hunters, We are decomposers, etc. Each precise noun the in find can become the basis of a paragraph of an organized expository essay. Students will learn the power of good nouns as they search and research. Click on this lesson link to see WritingFix's free-to-use lesson suggestion for this mentor text.
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 1. Not only are alphabet books good to have on hand to help students think about the organization of writing, but many of them are well-written enough to also be used as mentor texts for the trait of word choice. The Going Deep with 6 Trait Language Guide has some great resources for having students (together or as an individuals) create an alphabet book inspired by Chris Van Allsburg's The Z Was Zapped: A Play in Twenty-Six Acts. Here the author's use of alliteration is subtle and the verbs and adjectives empower his sentences. Students can be taught to do the same. Celebrate Van Allsburg's "riddle style" in this book, where he puts the sentence being "acted out" by each letter on the backside of each picture's page, which allows students to see the picture and guess what words the author will use to describe the picture. Students might enjoy mimicking this technique!
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 2. Our Haiku Riddles lesson was first shared at the NNWP's Spring Poetry Festival in 2005, and since then it has been one of the most popular prompts at WritingFix. Inspired by Jack Prelutsky's If Not for the Cat, which uses wonderful adjectives and verbs, should be read aloud without showing pictures the first time through so the students can guess what animal is being described. Students can then create original animal haiku riddles that utilize strong and animal-specific words. And then...they can create riddles for anything: presidents, periodic table elements, or famous places. Click on this lesson link to see WritingFix's free-to-use lesson suggestion for this mentor text. |
 2. Here's an entire picture book based on a celebration of simple word-play. Andrew Clements' Double Trouble In Walla Walla takes double-words (flimflam, hubbub, tutu, etc.) and makes an entire story out of them. The story is a scream to read out-loud, though it requires a bit of practice to avoid the parts that tie-up your tongue. As suggested in the Going Deep with 6 Trait Language Guide, make a chart of your students' favorite double words from the text, then send them out on a treasure hunt to find even more of these types of words. Put the charts out where all students can easily access them and challenge them to tell a short story that uses numerous examples. You'll have ore kids volunteer for author's chair than with this assignment than any of your others. |
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 3. Here's a book that absolutely appeals to the imagination of children--both young and young at heart. What If... by Regina J. Williams is a good night story (complete with glow-in-the-dark illustrations!) that makes beautiful use of both adjectives and verbs. Your students will be excited to first think up their own What If... scenarios, then crafting the language that brings what their imaginations have seen to another's brain. You can create an illustrated class book of original what ifs..., or your more ambitious writers can write and illustrate their own books. Click on this lesson link to see WritingFix's free-to-use lesson suggestion for this mentor text, and get ready to see your students imaginations go into over-drive. |
 3. The Amelia Bedelia series of books is fun and silly, but Fred Gwynne's clever series show the intelligence of puns. In addition to being Herman Munster on TV, Gwynne was a gifted illustrator and a lover of words. A Chocolate Moose for Dinner is but one of his books you can share, but it will get your kids thinking about homonyms and puns. If you follow a reading of this book with a reading of Brian Cleary's How Much Can a Bare Bear Bear?: What Are Homonyms and Homophones? will inspire your students to want to create their own punny cartoons. Let them! Host a punny cartoon contest. Hang them outside your classroom door, challenging other students from other classrooms to participate. Creating a culture of word lovers at your school might just start with this book. |
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Lessons and Prompts: Choosing the Perfect Adjectives and Verbs
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Webmaster's favorite adjectives and verbs resource:
- 200 Breath-taking Adjectives
- Synonyms for Said
The Northern Nevada Writing Project's print guide, "Going Deep with 6 Trait Language" offers a variety of awesome ideas on how to use the two handouts above. I'll summarize two of my favorites below.
If you don't have a copy of the guide, you should purchase one from the NNWP; money earned from guide sales keep the WritingFix website free-to-use.
The 99-Cent Description (page 86 of the guide) has students brainstorm theme-based words into five categories: 1-cent, 5-cent, 10-cent, 25-cent, and 50-cent words. Students then use their brainstormed words to create a multi-sentenced description that uses 99 cents' worth of words.
The Alphabetic Group Dialogue Writing Task (page 93 of the guide) has students write with said synonyms correctly, then purposely incorrectly, to see if a classmate can spot how a said synonym is used badly. This is an excellent exercise that teaches the importance of really knowing what synonyms mean.
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For student writers, adjectives are easy to use badly, and verbs are often overlooked as the part of speech that can turn a good sentence into a great sentence.
Just as voice and word choice are two writing traits that should be taught together, so too should strong adjectives and powerful verbs. The lessons and prompts in this section might focus on one or the other, but skillful teachers use these resources while talking to their students about both these parts of speech.
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Right-Brained Writing Prompts:
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Left-Brained Writing Prompts:
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Picture Book Inspired Lessons:
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Chapter Book Inspired Lessons:
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Poetry & Lyric Inspired Lessons:
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Literature Inspired Lessons:
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Lessons and Prompts: Choosing Precise Nouns and Understanding Pronouns
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We are currently revising many of our older lessons to focus on using strong and precise nouns. Check back with us often; this new section is about to grow!
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Webmaster's favorite precise nouns lesson:
We are currently revising many of our older lessons to focus on using strong and precise nouns. Check back with us often; this new section is about to grow!
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Right-Brained Writing Prompts:
- Serendipitous Comic Book Villains (undergoing revision)
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Left-Brained Writing Prompts:
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Picture Book Inspired Lessons:
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Chapter Book Inspired Lessons:
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Poetry & Lyric Inspired Lessons:
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Literature Inspired Lessons:
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Lessons and Prompts: Loving Word-Play and Loving Language
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Webmaster's favorite word play resource:
Nash-ing the Animals
Many writers love to toy with words in their stories and poems, but few authors have portfolios of work that can compare to Ogden Nash's love of word play. Nash had a knack for rhyming and/or inventing odd and peculiar words and phrases for his short poems, and students can be challenged to imitate his style as a means to appreciate word choices all the more.
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Language is a playground, and most student writers have experienced this already. Their favorite jokes are "punny," and they giggle at the way some words sound to their ears or feel as they come out of their mouths.
But there are more sophisticated ways to play with language, ways that go beyond jokes. This section's lessons and resources suggest fun ways to play with words before, during, and after writing.
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Right-Brained Writing Prompts:
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Left-Brained Writing Prompts:
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Picture Book Inspired Lessons:
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Chapter Book Inspired Lessons:
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Poetry & Lyric Inspired Lessons:
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Literature Inspired Lessons:
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Lessons and Prompts: Using Words Inventively
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Webmaster's favorite inventive word resource:
This section will be our newest collection of word choice lessons to further help students discover word choice. Look for a whole new set of lessons and prompts in 2009.
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Right-Brained Writing Prompts:
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Left-Brained Writing Prompts:
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Picture Book Inspired Lessons:
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Chapter Book Inspired Lessons:
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Poetry & Lyric Inspired Lessons:
- In 2009, we will be launching a new collection of poetry and lyric-inspired writing prompts. Check back with us soon.
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Literature Inspired Lessons:
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The Word Choice Chalkboard
(WritingFix users: share an idea you have for teaching word choice)
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Get out your Chalk! It's our Word Choice Chalkboard:
(send us a high-quality teaching suggestion, and we'll send you one of the NNWP's awesome print publications...see bottom of this chalkboard for details)
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Dear NNWP,
 I just love your site.
Had to share this delightful book--Armadilly Chili by Helen Ketteman. Was in San Antonio for the NWP Conference and had to find something from Texas to bring back to my 7th graders. This is a fun read just for the word choices and the art work is adorable. I used it to introduce and review conflicts with my 7th graders. They loved it. The story conflict “seems” like Man Vs Nature at first, then It’s Man vs Man, but ultimately it is Man vs Self. It was a great way to get these three types of conflicts across to all of my students and a good review on how to determine the conflict in a story by going to the main character and seeing how he/she solves a problem and changes.
Focus Trait is Word Choice: Look at how all the words are related to the West/ cowboy/ or Texas. Sticking to a word theme.
Support Trait is Idea Development / Conflict
Although I think these two traits could be switched.
--Pam Adamczyk**, New Jersey teacher
**We sent Pam a complimentary copy of the NNWP's Going Deep with Compare & Contrast Thinking Guide because of the quality of what she wrote on our chalkboard. Thanks, Pam!
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Dear WritingFix,
 I am a huge fan of your website!
I wanted to share a book that I have used over and over again when I teach word choice. The book is called Piggie Pie! by Margie Palatini. It is an adorable story of a witch who desperately needs eight piggies to make her piggie pie. She ends up at Old McDonald's farm, but the piggies have disguised themselves, and the witch goes home without her piggies. When I use this book to teach, I first read a version of the story that has all the descriptive words changed, or taken out. The students have to see how many "colorful" words they can find, which is usually not very many. I then read the book a second time the way it is actually written. The students are always writing furiously to get all the "colorful" words written down. When I am done, we make a chart of all the descriptive words that are found in the story. We hang up the chart and use these words over and over through the year. My students love this story and the activity!
--Holly Platt**, Arizona teacher
**We sent Holly a complimentary copy of the NNWP's Going Deep with Compare & Contrast Thinking Guide because of the quality of what she wrote on our chalkboard. Thanks, Pam!
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Dear NNWP,
 In order to encourage children to use more precise words, I challenge students in grades 3+ with a lesson we call "10 - No Repeat".
The children are given a topic. The topic may be a holiday, a shared book, or whatever you like. Then, the children are asked to write 10 sentences about the topic. The challenge comes in with the "no repeat". "No repeat" means that they may not use a word more than one time... yes, that includes: "is", "the", "and", "I", etc. They may only use a word once.
This acitivity pushes children to find alternative ways of stating the topic, use precise words, and find different ways to express their thoughts. A by-product of this activity is that the children will begin to vary the structure of their sentences.
Sharing and analyzing their favorite sentence allows other students to grab on to a new idea/way to write. Finally, we write a reflection in our journals about something we learned during the lesson.
--Rhonda Donaldson**, Missouri teacher
**We sent Rhonda a complimentary copy of the NNWP's Going Deep with Compare & Contrast Thinking Guide because of the quality of what she wrote on our chalkboard. Thanks, Pam!
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Send us a favorite lesson idea or mentor text suggestion to include on this chalkboard. Please use "Word Choice Chalkboard" as your e-mail's subject line, and be sure to let us know where you are from when you send the idea!
Send your chalkboard ideas to us at webmaster@writingfix.com
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Copyright 2009 - WritingFix and the Northern Nevada Writing Project- All Rights Reserved
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