Use these sample essays to help students revise their opinion/argument and informative/explanatory writing.
Revising may be the most important part of the writing process for real authors.
Revising makes changes to the ideas and structure of the writing: adding, changing, deleting, clarifying, reordering.
Editing ensures the capitalization, spelling, and punctuation are correct. These are all polite cues to the reader that help them understand your work.
Remember that the writing process is fluid and revising and editing can happen throughout the process. It is NOT requiring students to handwrite a first draft and type a final copy. Don’t do that.
You can use my slides below as is, but it would be way more powerful for you to create your own examples using the same genre of writing but not the same prompt as your students. You want to display a poor sample that shows a pattern of error you see many students making and compare it to a high-quality sample that demonstrates the level of writing you expect from students.
Do NOT display real samples of student work. This activity invites students to write with clarity, and should not involve shaming students for wherever they are in their skill development. You should write both samples.
Let’s Get to It
Read their work to know what you need to teach. You have to be reading students’ writing as they work. This can look like informal conferences or skimming through their docs on Google classroom. Revision is something that occurs during the writing process. Circling all the grammatical errors after students have submitted a paper helps no one and was a waste of your time.
Pick your battles. Choose which specific part of the essay you want students to improve, based on what you’ve seen them write.
Show them the writing samples. Choosing one section to focus on at a time, have them turn and talk about which one is better. It would be best to write your own, but here are mine you can use for inspiration:
Why? The most important part of this activity is asking students why. What exactly makes one sample better than the other? How is it more effective in communicating the ideas?
Invite them to revise. After you discuss one section of the essay, have students immediately go and revise that piece of their essay. They may not need to. If not, they can use that time to continue their paper. Have them turn and talk to share what they wrote, if they decided to revise, and if so what they changed.
See the entire series on writing:
These resources are for opinion/argument and informative/explanatory essays, geared towards grades 3-8.
- The Writing Process Explained in Memes
- 5 Types of Writing on the Mississippi State Test
- ChatGPT? Might as Well
- 18 Hook Ideas with Mentor Text
- Writing Introductory Paragraphs
- Writing Body Paragraphs
- Choosing the Best Evidence
- Writing Conclusions
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4 responses to “Revising”
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These are excellent tips! I alway found revision to be incredibly daunting until I figured out that knowing the why helps you know the how of making it better.
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Hhhhmmm….now I think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever revised my essays before. This would be good for me, back in the days when I used to write them.
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Asking “why” questions seems like a much more helpful way to help students to learn to write better. Great slides to demonstrate!
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Your message about the meaning of revising was very insightful, and I appreciate you sharing it with us
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