Revising Writing

Don't kids just love revising their writing?  Um, not.  They give this, "Seriously, lady? I just finished writing this--I'm over it" kind of face.

This year I focused my mentor sentences during the first grading period on parts of speech and using that to improve writing.  We worked on identifying nouns so that we could add adjectives to be more descriptive.  That sort of thing.  I wanted to give them more support during the revising stage so all that doesn't slip away as move into more of a punctuation/grammar phase.

In our writers' workshop, we've also worked on word choice, showing not telling, visualizing, rearranging sentences, and adding some pep.  Whew.  That's a lot for eight and nine year olds to remember.

Here's my solution.  What do you think?



I have two sets ready to go for each basket waiting for us to revise our latest story. I can't wait for the kids to use them.

I got this great idea after reading this post by Stephanie over at 3rd Grade Thoughts.

She has a really great nonfiction pack for sale in her store.  Which I bought.  Anyway, Stephanie shared how she took the nonfiction posters in her pack and printed several sets of them in a smaller format.  Then she put a ring in each and put them at each table in her classroom, so the kids always had the information close by when they needed it.

Genius!!!  Visit her blog for a tutorial on making the posters you've purchased or made streeeeeetch even farther.  So smart.

I got to thinking about ways I wanted to use that idea in my classroom.  As I was writing my lesson plans and penciling in revising our latest story, a light bulb went off.


I think it will be very helpful for a lot of my kids.  Hopefully, between these two sets, they'll have something that moves them in a positive direction with revising.  These are in my TPT store here and here now, but I'll e-mail a complete set to the first three people that leave a comment.

What about you?  Got any great revising tips?