Revising and Editing

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Home : 2003 : July : 2

Revising and Editing
By Tricia

I explain to my class that even adults use the writing process. I tell them that for every single paper I write for my college graduate classes, I revise and edit my work. This generally gets them hooked because they think
of teachers as being full of knowledge and never making a mistake!

I model these 2 stages of the writing process for the whole class a lot at the beginning of the year. I use samples from previous years (so there are no hurt feelings), type them and make an overhead. As a whole class we revise the piece and edit. Last year, after the third whole class session, my students really

got it and were off and running!

I explain step by step what each part of the process is. During the revising stage, the author of the writing piece reads the work aloud to me or a peer. This is the time when I would ask the author questions about a sentence that is unclear. I might say "Reread that sentence. I am confused about..." or "Can you think of a different way to word that sentence?" The revision stage is a great time for the author to catch mistakes such as repetition of words and/or complete thoughts, run-on sentences, etc. When students are doing this with a classmate it is very important that they provide POSITIVE feedback to each other.

During the editing stage the peer or teacher reads through the work, looking for spelling, punctuation and capitalization errors. My students use specific editing symbols that are taught at the beginning of the year. The author then gets the written piece back and looks it over, making necessary corrections.