As teachers we sometimes forget that students often do not understand what we mean when we ask them to edit. It is interesting when you ask them, their responses are often all related to fixing spelling and punctuation. They seem focused on editing for Conventions. Students have to be shown how to edit for Meaning, Style and Form. They also need to be shown how to use spell check.
Editing for Meaning:
- Ask students to have someone else read and make comments on document (insert comments) InsertCommentsInstructions
- Using the speak selection option, have the computer/iPad read the document
Editing for Style:
- Have students turn on Track Changes:Editingwork-trackChanges
- In Word turn on the Readability Statistics and explain how letter and word count works
- Ask students to use a thesaurus to change simple words to more detailed or concise words
- Ask students to combine sentences
- Highlight the first word in every sentence to see if they always start a sentence the same way
- Change beginning of sentence by avoiding starting the sentence with a noun. Try using verbs, adverbs, prepositions or clauses.
- Give the students an electronic copy of this document:WordChoiceSuggestions
Editing for Form:
- Have students check for topic/concluding paragraphs and topic/concluding sentences.
- Students can copy topic sentences (paragraph) to another document and have peer read and give feed back on what the paragraph (writing) may be about. (See InsertCommentsInstructions above)
Editing for Conventions
- Teach them how to use spell check and how to recheck a document.
Overall Editing
- Remember to use the Quick Scales during the writing process
- Have students highlight where they think they are on the QS and highlight excerpts of their document to prove