Revision-What's That?

I love to write. I always have. Even when I struggled through school as a student, writing was my safe place. It was the place I felt smart.

One of the things I have always had a hard time teaching students is how to revise in an effective way. We would get to that part in the writing process, and  I would give them a checklist. They would go back to their seats, check yes in each column while never actually revising, and call it good. 

Year after year this would happen, and I didn't know how to fix it. Until now. 

The idea came from a Kelly Gallagher tweet I had read on twitter near the end of September:

"No paper is ever finished. It is just due. Papers always remain eligible for revision, even after a grade is placed. Latest papers are called "best drafts," never "final drafts."

This really got me thinking and changed the way I talk about written work. I started referring to the finished piece as their "best draft" and realized that I could utilize my mini lessons and writer's workshop for revision.

One of the reasons students don't like to revise is because teachers give one day for revising the whole piece. That's a lot of work. My students had revised their recent narratives at least seven times by the time they found themselves on the editing portion. And each time they revised, I made sure to tell them what revision number we were on. I wanted to make sure they understood that revising takes time. It's not a one time thing.

Here is the revision journey I took with my students:

On day one, they wrote their first draft in their writer's notebooks. After that, they typed up what they had in google docs and it was revision from there on. Each day I taught a mini lesson, then they went back into their work and revised their piece to meet the needs of the mini lesson. For this narrative they worked on stretching their story, adding figurative language and dialog, hooks, strong endings, and author's craft. They worked collaboratively in groups of three on revisions using the PQS (Praise Question Suggestion) strategy. The students focused on one aspect of their writing they wanted to improve on. Not all of it. It worked out amazingly well. They didn't feel overwhelmed and each time their drafts were better than the one before.

I will continue to teach revision this way because when all is said and done, the students did an AMAZING job.

And you know what?

It wasn't as hard as they thought it was going to be. To them, it was fun. Isn't that what writing is supposed to be?

One student's narrative checklist