Picture this: You’re teaching a writing unit to middle school students and students have completed prewriting, selected a topic, and have a completed draft. It’s time to start revising and editing lessons. You pour your heart and soul into teaching a series of revision lessons and an editing lesson and can’t wait to see the miraculous changes students have made to their initial drafts. You go to read students’ new and improved drafts and feel deflated when you see little to no changes made from the draft they had a week ago before the revision and editing lessons began.
Middle school students are notoriously bad at making changes to their writing once they have established an initial draft. Over the years, I’ve tried different ways to teach revising and editing in an attempt to inspire students to tear their drafts apart and be reflective writers. So what has actually worked? I’m going to share three teaching hacks that have actually caused students to make revisions and edits to their writing.
Strategy One: Use Ctrl + F to find specific words in their draft that need to be changed.
My students just finished writing their Deleted Scenes, a narrative writing unit where they take a scene from a book that was mentioned but not written about in detail and bring that scene to life. Once students had their Deleted Scene initial drafts written, we did a revising lesson on sequence and pacing of events. I talked with students about showing the passage of time and letting events unfold naturally versus explicitly stating one event after another using the word “then.”
I actually had students hit “Ctrl + F” on their keyboards and search for the word “then.” In a Google Doc, it automatically highlights every time that “then” was used so students could go directly to those particular spots and make revisions. We went over several examples of how to take a place in the draft where “then” was used and how to revise to show one event moving to the next. I was blown away by the effectiveness of this technique. Revising writing can sometimes be so subjective, and this was explicit: If you see a place where you used then, revise that spot.
This strategy could work with different words, depending on what type of writing students are doing and what words you would like to see them not use in their writing.
Strategy Two: Private comment with specific areas to focus on versus using an editing or revising checklist.
Trust me, I love using an editing and revising checklist as much as the next person. I’m not saying that they’re a bad tool to use. They actually work great in conjunction with the strategy I’m about to discuss. What sometimes goes wrong with an editing or revising checklist is it can be overwhelming for students to know what to focus on if it’s too long, or students can feel like it’s not relevant to them because they think their writing is already good to go.
If you assign student drafts on Google Classroom and you’re able to go and see students’ drafts prior to an editing lesson, this is the perfect strategy. Prior to editing for conventions such as capitalization, spelling, and punctuation, I like to scan over each students’ draft and leave a private comment with a list of 3-4 items to focus on when they go to personally edit their writing piece.
I tell students to start with the areas of focus I’ve given them before using the Editing Checklist. I realize this strategy takes extra time for the teacher on the front end, but I’ve found that it eases the teacher workload and grading frustrations on the back end. Another reason I’m really fond of this strategy is because I’m able to ask students who write with strong conventions to consider a higher level editing skill specific to what they need. On the other hand, I ask students who struggle with writing conventions to focus on more foundational skills that need to be fixed in their writing. Either way, students are given a list focused on what they need evidenced by their current piece of writing.
The last time I used this strategy, I was amazed by the shift of engagement and questions I received while students were editing their papers. The personalized comment of where to focus their editing piqued curiosity and ownership in students. All of a sudden, I heard questions like:
- “What did you mean by place a comma between the dependent clause and the independent clause in a complex sentence?”
- “How do I check that I’m using the correct forms of homophones?”
- “Will you look at this sentence and tell me if it’s a run-on?”
Strategy Three: Try guided editing with the mentor text for the unit
After scanning over students’ drafts on Google Classroom prior to editing writing, I like to make a list of the most common convention errors I notice. Next, I take the mentor text for the unit and “Make a Copy” of the mentor text. On the copy, I intentionally make errors that mimic the common convention mistakes I see in students’ writing. I then assign this copy of the mentor text as an assignment on Google Classroom. I walk students through the convention errors that are made, and we talk about how to fix them and make the changes together.
I’m not a fan of daily correct-alls with a million unnatural errors in them. This type of daily instruction imprints bad writing in students’ brains and doesn’t prepare them to edit their own writing in real life. The difference with daily correct-alls and this strategy is the use of the mentor text and incorporating realistic, common errors. Students see the connection to their draft because the mentor text is the same genre they’re writing in. Also, the errors that are made mimic what I actually see are common mistakes in student writing for the current writing assignment.
This strategy works as a great warm-up prior to students editing their writing so they can get their brains ready for what type of errors to look for and learn how to make the necessary edits to correct the errors.
Final Thoughts
Students take action when editing and revising is specific and personalized. When students can take ownership and feel they have the tools necessary to make changes in their writing, they will. Here’s to better revising and editing days ahead, filled with students eagerly and reflectively making changes to improve their writing. If you’re looking for middle school writing units that are ready to go and have revising and editing lessons built in, check out my writing units.
