The Power of the Red Pen: Editing-Revising

As my wonderful skilled Writers finish up their narratives, we discussed the power of editing and revising. This step in the Writing Process is so important as they polish off their stories.

During this process, the students were taught basic editing marks. Then, they were reminded of the types of errors to look for: punctuation, spelling, and selecting the most precise word choice. They were also reminded to look for ways to improve the story by adding adjectives and similes. Students were put in pairs to practice fixing a pretend story with many errors! Here are a few samples of the mistakes they were able to find and correct.

They knew the beginning of
sentences and titles start with capital letters, 'i' should ALWAYS be capitalized, sentences don't start with 'and, but, or so', use different transition words, you begin a new paragraph when the setting changes or a new speaker talks, and also added adjectives and similes. What a difference editing and revising makes! Great job Writers! Now, we begin the final step: Publishing our hard work. :)