Revision in Writing

As we are now in the midst of having our students publish a piece of narrative writing to collect district data; the students are given the option to either revise their submission from the beginning of the school year or to create a new piece.

An important part of the writing process is revision. But exactly what is revision? “Revision is the stage in the writing process where the author reviews, alters, and amends their message, according to what has been written in the draft. Revision follows drafting and precedes editing. Drafting and revising often form a loop as a work moves back and forth between the two stages.” See below.

Image result for writing process image

Revision is not easy. Our writers need to be explicitly taught strategies on how and what it looks like. We cannot just tell our students — go revise your paper, they will be lost.  Below are some strategies on how we can get our students to revise.

  1. Provide models for the students to see what this looks like. Take a piece of writing from your own journal and model in front of them what it looks like to revise.
  2. Add details to your writing” – we’ve all heard and said this to our students. If a strategy has not been explicitly taught, they will probably just go back and add one word. One strategy that is powerful in “The Big Book of Details” by Roz Linder is called Zoom In. Linder describes zooming in as focusing “more on highlighting a physical or personality trait of a person, an aspect of an object, or an experience.” She suggests trying this with your class by zooming in on objects in the classroom and do a shared writing. Below is an example of zooming in on an object (outside classroom):

Example: My pickup truck made its way down the road to school.

Revised:  My old, tattered, and rusty pickup truck made its way, chugging along, down the road to school.

  1. Delete the unnecessary – Our students will sometimes write without clarity and muddy the true intent of their writing. After your student has read their writing, here are a few questions you may ask them:
  • Do you have a better understanding of the subject?
  • Can you picture this in your mind?
  • Did you stay on the subject/topic throughout?

Revision can be taught during small group or individual conferences, depending upon the need of each student. If you are wondering what this might look at your grade level, below I have included a Learning Progression for the Writing Process on revision.

Level 1:          Beginning of Kindergarten

  • With support, writers can go back and tell new details about the event/topic. They can point to their pictures, add on to the pictures, and perhaps label.

Level 2:          Mid-Year of Kindergarten

  • When nudged, writers reread their work, and revise by adding to pictures, making new pictures and sentences and adding labels.

Level 3:          End of Kindergarten/Beginning of 1st Grade

  • When nudged, writers revise their work by “stretching” out a picture, that is, drawing more pictures to show parts of the event and then writing sentences to stretch out the story. The writer may also add more sentences (between three and six sentences to the book).
  • A writer at this stage is also starting to learn that revision can help focus a piece of writing and may begin to take off parts.

Level 4:          End of 1st Grade/Beginning of 2nd Grade

  • A writer at this stage has a small repertoire of revision strategies (add more dialogue, take away parts, add more details, stretch out the most important, etc.). She knows to use a chart for visual reminders of learned strategies.
  • A writer at this stage knows that there are predictable places that are important to revise (e.g., the beginning, the climax, etc.).
  • The writer begins to revise with more purpose, considering craft and the effect different craft choices have on the way a story sounds to a reader.

Level 5:          End of 2nd Grade/Beginning of 3rd Grade

  • A student at this level will write an entirely new draft of a story. In previous levels, the child may have written changes on an original draft and published that, and now she is ready to make significant large-scale changes and then write a second draft outside of the notebook. She has a small repertoire of revision strategies and knows that there are key ways revision can always pay off (i.e., revising beginning, ending, key parts, rethinking audience, topic, etc.). Her new draft does not just feel like a reworked version of the first but rather shows significant large-scale change. She knows to begin working on a new piece immediately after “finishing” one.

Level 6:          End of 3rd Grade/Beginning of 4th Grade

  • The student at this level can take one piece through a sequence of drafts, each feeling entirely new and benefiting from large-scale changes. Students at this level have multiple revision strategies, They “write until the water runs clear” and know that more rewriting will lead to better writing. The child also understands that revisions bring out the significance of the piece.
  • The writer is starting to not wait until revision to make a piece stronger but considers this while drafting.

Level 7:          End of 4th Grade/Beginning of 5th Grade

  • At this level, students have an internalized sense that yesterday’s revision strategies become today’s drafting work, and they bring all they know about revision into the initial drafting of their stories. Their revision is large scale and targeted, and they have multiple strategies to draw from. Students at this level begin to look closely and critically at mentor texts during this stage of revision and ask themselves what the author did that they can try.

Level 8:          End of 5th Grade/Beginning of 6th Grade

  • At this level, students revise not only drafts but also entries, choosing to find ways to ratchet up their own work using strategies they have learned, mentor texts, and talks with partners. Rather than following strategies to revise key places, a student at this level might instead or also read through a piece searching for places where the writing feels stronger or weaker and marking and rewriting those over and over.
  • A student at this level might also start to revise by experimenting with craft to bring out significance. For example, a writer might not just rewrite her lead starting with dialogue, description and so on but rather look more closely at varying sentence lengths, word choice, punctuation moves, and so on.

As always, let us know if we can help you further.

 

Works Cited

Calkins, Lucy. Units of Study in Opinion, Information, and Narrative Writing. Heinemann, 2013.

Linder, Rozlyn. The Big Book of Details: 46 Moves for Teaching Writers to Elaborate. Heinemann, 2016.

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