4 Strategies for Teaching Students How to Revise

During revision, students should work closely together, discuss models, add details,
delete the unnecessary, and rearrange for clarity and eff ect.

I’m a fan of the writi ng workshop. That means I also write with my students, and I
allow plenty of ti me for students to conference with me and with each other. I
also provide models of what good writi ng looks like—and lots of them.

Here’s what the classroom writi ng process looks like:

 Brainstorming (Think About It)

 Drafting (Getting It Down)

 Revising (Making It Better)

 Editing (Making It Right)

 Publishing (Sharing It)

At the beginning of the writi ng process, I have had students write silently. For it to
be successful, in my experience, students need plenty of topics handy (self-
generated, or a list of topics, questi ons, and prompts provided). Silent writi ng is a
wonderful, focused acti vity for the brainstorming and  draft ing stage of the writi ng
process. I also think it's important that the teacher write during this ti me,  as well
(model, model, model).

However, when it comes to revising, and later  editi ng, I think peer interacti on
is necessary. Students need to, for example, “rehearse” words, phrases,
introducti ons, and thesis statements with each other during the revision stage.

Strategy 1: Providing Models
This is the number one strategy for a reason. Whatever we want kids to do in their
writi ng, we have to provide models for them. Want them to create zippy ti tles for
that essay? Show them zippy ti tles, and talk about ways they can forage for ti tle
ideas from within their paragraphs. For example, it could be a few words that hint
or foreshadow at what’s to come in a narrati ve,  or for that literary analysis paper, it
could be one word that describes the mood of a character or of the story.

During revision ti me, I like to use anonymous student papers from other class
periods (or past years) on the document camera with the whole class—one that has
similar clunkiness or vague generaliti es I see in current papers of students (e.g.,
repeti ti on, lack of descripti ve or supporti ve sentences, or  lack of complex sentence
structures).
We revise the example together. Students will share out things to add,  delete,
and rearrange. As they share, the teacher can make those changes. This is powerful
stuff , and always confi rms for me that the writi ng process needs to be a social act.

So how do students know what to add, delete, or rearrange? Again, using models
(those that are exemplary and those that need some repair) helps young writers see
and learn what good writi ng looks like.

Strategy 2: Adding Details

Encourage your students to add details to their narrati ve writi ng. For example,
students can insert imagery, emoti ons, dialogue, and voice. In a narrati ve essay,
present them with a sentence like “She was so ti red,” and have them re-create
it using imagery: “Her eyelids drooped as she dragged her ti red feet behind her.”
Show some models of dialogue, and ask students to fi nd in their own narrati ons
where they explain. Might adding dialogue brighten the story? Tell them to try it.

For nonfi cti on, expository writi ng, students can insert  facts, stati sti cs, examples,
and quotes from experts. Use a student essay example where there is a claim
made without any evidence to follow: “Most people don’t think Trump would make
a good president.” Talk about the diff erent kinds of evidence they can use to
support the claim and then have them search for evidence: “According to a poll
given to U.S. voters in January 2016, only one out of 15 Americans would vote for
Trump.”

Students should do this together with the same example or model and fi nd a variety
of types of evidence to back the claim (a stati sti c, a quote from a politi cian, etc.).
This collecti vely demonstrates to them how to do this, allows them to practi ce
together, and provides an opportunity for them to teach each other.

Strategy 3: Deleting the Unnecessary

Provide students with a narrati ve or expository essay where there is some
redundancy of a topic or repeti ti on of words. As a group, decide to combine ideas
that are redundant or remove one altogether. For repeti ti ve words, ask students to
look through the thesaurus and choose synonyms to consider.  Nice is a
word students may use repeti ti vely. They delete the three extra uses of it and
replace those with pleasant,  kind,  caring.

Show students another essay, or two or three,  where the writer goes off topic. Ask
them to fi nd similar places in their own writi ng and make note to remove or rewrite
those secti ons.

Strategy 4: Rearranging for Clarity and Effect

In that argumentati ve essay or short story, maybe the ending is a bett er beginning?
Show students text examples where the writer begins with the end or the middle of
the story (for narrati ve), or, for argumentati ve, where a writer begins with the
devastati ng results of a policy or environmental disaster, then moves to persuade
readers in the rest of the essay.

Would the narrati ve story be bett er if writt en chronologically? Or should the claims
and evidence follow in an order related to the most  important point, or should you
save the best point and evidence unti l the end?

Show your students models of diff erent ways to organize narrati ve, informati onal,
and argumentati ve essays. You may even wish to provide scissors and ask them to
cut up a draft and mix around the order to see how it reads.

We teachers someti mes combine revising and editi ng—and this confuses our
students. Revision is making it bett er, and editi ng is making it correct. Sure, some
editi ng (cleaning up grammar and conventi ons) might occur during the revision
stage, and that’s great. But as my colleague Jane Hancock says, the revision stage is
about ti ghtening, brightening, and sharpening the writi ng.