Using Benchmark Papers to Teach Writing With the Traits

Using Benchmark Papers to Teach Writing With the Traits: Grades 3-5
by Ruth Culham
with Mike Freborg and Pat McCarty


This book is awesome and has a lot of potential uses.  It can be used to help teachers become better scorers of writing and students (and teachers) to become better writers by scoring, discussing, and revising each piece.  


The best part of this book are the thirty-six benchmark papers.  There are six papers for each of the six traits, ranging in score from 1-6.  Each paper is typed and under one page long.  


The pieces are scored for all 6 traits.  The piece that received a 6 for Voice, received a 5 for ideas and a 2 for conventions.  The score for the paper's focus trait is then explained in detail.  Finally,  comments you could share with the writer are provided. 


The book also contains a 6 point teacher rubric for scoring each trait. The rubric is broken up into three parts: High, Middle, and Low.  You can then have a high High, a 6, or a low High, a 5.  It is one of the better rubrics I've seen. 


Furthermore, the High, Middle, and Low scores have the same 4 titles. For example, ideas has: "Finding a Topic", "Focusing the Topic", "Developing the Topic", and "Using Details."  High, Middle, and Low then have their own descriptors for each title to help differentiate between them. 


3 sample lessons are also included.  Each lesson involves discussing/scoring the piece and then revising the piece. The revision of the piece is an awesome idea. Students can say what is wrong and then actually make the story better. 


The book also contains a CD.  Each of the benchmark papers is available on the CD.  Extra resources that are mentioned in the book but not shown in the book are also included on the CD.


While this book is great, I wish it had 3 examples for each score, so buildings could divide the papers up among the three grades.  It would also be nice if all of the resources contained on the CD were also printed in the book.  For example, student friendly rubrics are only available on the CD. 


Using Benchmark Papers to Teach Writing With the Traits is a valuable resource that will make teaching writing easier for you and learning to write easier for your students.


A lower elementary version and middle school version are also available. 


Published: 2009

Locations: School library and Amazon

Mentor Author, Mentor Texts

Mentor Author, Mentor Texts
by Ralph Fletcher


I've read and used other teacher books by Ralph Fletcher so I was excited to read this book. Mentor Author, Mentor Texts was a quick read that I will soon be using with my fifth grade students. It contains 24 different short stories, essays, non-fiction pieces, or poems.  Each piece is printed neatly and teachers are allowed to photocopy them for student use.  Each piece also comes with an explanation of the craft choices Mr. Fletcher used when creating the piece.  Three of the pieces have multiple drafts so students can see the revisions Mr. Fletcher made.

This book provides excellent writing samples to share with your children.  Mr. Fletcher makes some keys points about how to use the samples. First read each piece multiple times. Second, instead of telling students what to notice, ask them what they notice happening in the piece.  (I was first exposed to this idea of noticing after reading Jeff Anderson's Mechanically Inclined.) I think it is a great idea because it allows each student to learn from where they are at.  Third, use Mr. Fletcher's explanation of craft choices to show how authors make many deliberate decisions when writing.

While I haven't used the book yet because I wanted to finish it before taking it into school, it has already  inspired a great writing lesson.  My students are currently working on writing mini-mysteries.  After reading "The Old Baseball", where Mr. Fletcher writes the same story from multiple points of view, I decided I needed to do a mini-lesson on point of view.  Each of my students wrote a story about playing catch with a football with me.  The first story was from their point of view.  The second story was from my point of view.  The third story was from the football's point of view.  The students had fun and did some great writing.  I then asked each child to consider whose point of view they wanted to tell their mystery from. At least one student is going to tell the story from the missing object's point of view and another is going to tell the story from a dog's point of view.

If you purchase the hard copy of the book you also get access to a digital copy of the book online.  It appears to be an exact copy that would be great for projecting onto a whiteboard.  Sixteen of the stories are also read aloud by Mr. Fletcher on the online version.  I don't believe you can download the materials, but once you register with Heinemann, using the resource is very simple.

First Published: 2011


Genre: Teaching Writing


Available at: Amazon and Barnes and Noble