When you ask students to really think about their writing process, one of the things I've noticed, at least with my students, is that they will tell you, okay, I think brainstorming is gonna take me about five minutes, and then writing this will take me about ten or fifteen minutes, and then editing it will take me two minutes. And you're like, no.
Hi, and welcome back to the Smarter Literacy Podcast from Ascend Smarter Intervention, where we simplify effective literacy instruction so every student gets what they need and every educator gets to breathe a little easier. I'm Lindsey.
And I'm Corey, and we have had so many great conversations and questions following up on our last episodes about spelling, sentence writing, and longer form writing that we just had to come back and share a little bit more on this specific topic. So today, we wanna talk more about our editing process.
Editing is so important because without editing, students aren't always able to effectively communicate what they're trying to say.
And frankly, editing is how we actually get the finished product. Absolutely. It's basically how we can make sure that others are able to take meaning away from what we're trying to express.
And I think the interesting thing is that so many of us, including myself, to be honest, really felt like editing was just this checklist of things that you just glance through really quickly where you're like, okay. Great. Yep. Did it.
And that's honestly what a lot of my students try to do. And when I ask them to edit their work, it usually consists of this five second glance of Yep. It's good. It's edited.
Yeah. I mean, I remember when I first became a teacher and I asked my students to look back through their work to see if they need to fix anything, and their response was always, nope. Looks good to me.
And I was so shocked.
I'm like, you can't see these glaring errors?
You think this is you think this is good?
Like and I was like, oh my gosh. I was not expecting this. Right? And this is when I was a a seventh grade English teacher. I'm like, no.
No. It's it's not good.
It's it's not.
It's not good. There's lots of things we need to go back and fix, guys. And they're like, like, what? I'm like, oh, I didn't realize I was gonna have to teach you this. I just thought you would would see it and be like, oh, yeah. I'm missing capitals and periods, and this sentence doesn't even make sense.
I just thought they would get it.
Absolutely. It's you spend so much time going through each of those individual pieces too. Oh, this is a capital. This is when we use it.
This is a punctuation. This is what happens when we have a question or that we wanna express something with excitement. And I think a lot of that you feel like, well, when you were learning to read Yeah. You learned all of those things.
And so why then would we not take that and put that directly into our writing? But they're just like, no. It's good. To your point, you're like, it it really is.
It isn't at all. It's really bad, guys.
But like you said, honestly, when students are not actually taking the time, they're just literally glancing at it, they're really missing an opportunity to help others hear what they're trying to say because I think a lot of times they have good ideas. Yeah. They have things that they want to express or things that they wanna share. And you're like, these are good ideas and I don't understand any of it because you didn't take the time to go back through to make sure that you were actually conveying what it was that you were trying to say.
And so I think sometimes when we can actually pull that back for them, the importance of why we're editing, I think that can help. Because I think so often kids are like, I just wanna be done. Yeah. I just wanna turn something in.
I wanna have a finished product. And I think when you just treat it like, oh, well, here's a checklist of other things that you have to do before it's actually done, it just feels like, no, I'd rather not do that. So we'll just go ahead and look at it and say it's good.
And they very much are of the mind, it's good enough. Good enough is acceptable to turn in and it's no.
Now we kinda have to flip the switch and and change that thought of we need to build our stamina up in our writing as well as our reading so that it's not just good enough.
It's great. It's really good. You're really because like you said, our students really have great ideas. Verbally, they can tell me and I'm like, great. Write it down. They're like, I don't know how to. And it's like, okay.
That's where we gotta we gotta help. Yep. Absolutely. And I think so often it does. We talked about this more in our last episode where you'll get that stream of consciousness or you'll just get, alright. This this is what it is.
I think this is gonna be the point where we can start to really clean that up. And again, if you missed the last episode, definitely go back and listen to that one because we talk more about the entire process.
So what that looks like from brainstorming and thinking about what we wanna write about and then actually putting that outline and draft together. But then the last piece of that is this editing piece. And when you ask students to really think about their writing process, one of the things I've noticed, at least with my students, is that they will tell you, okay, I think brainstorming is gonna take me about five minutes, and then writing this will take me about ten or fifteen minutes, and then editing it will take me two minutes. And you're like, no.
It's that's always the case.
I don't think I've ever had a student who was like, editing should be the longest part.
You know? It's it's always like a two minute thing. It's just, oh, yeah. Check and done and everything.
You know, thinking back to when I was a younger student, I would have thought very much the same. I would have thought it's a checklist. I've done the work already. I just need to kinda, like, dot my i's and whatever and just finish it up.
So mean, now now as a teacher and someone who's also done a lot of writing in her life, I know that editing needs to be the longest part of the process. Absolutely.
And that's one of the things that we work with our students a lot on just as part of that full writing process is actually the time management of it and recognizing and knowing that this piece is expected to take potentially, to your point, the longest.
In fact, most of the time, brainstorming is gonna be the shortest. You already have great ideas. You already know what you wanna say.
The next longest piece is gonna be actually thinking about how you organize that and how you put your ideas together. But then the last piece is that editing where we make sure, am I actually answering the question or am I actually communicating effectively? And what do I need to do in order to make that happen? And so I think when we can flip that script, like you said, for the students to know, oh, this is actually the work.
The real work actually starts with the editing. I think that helps them to realize, oh, this is gonna take longer. And as we've done that with our students, at least with my students, I know that they've started to realize, oh, editing will take the longest. So now when we brainstorm the writing process, they know that editing will take the longest.
Right. They're like, okay. We have just begun. By the time we finish drafting, we've actually just begun.
Yes.
So I again, I think if if nothing else, just have your students start to recognize how long that takes, and I think that can be a big shift just on its own.
Now for us, one of the strategies that I have found to be super effective is actually color coding. Honestly, you can color code in so many different ways. There's no perfect way to do this. There's no right way to do this.
But the reason that I think it is so effective is because it draws their attention To what they're actually focusing on. And so it becomes more of an executive functioning strategy. Yes. You're essentially taking them and saying, okay, this is what we're attending to or focusing on right now.
Right. When you think about editing, there's so many things to focus on, and that's part of the reason that they just look at it and they're yeah. Good. It's just like when I send my son up to his bedroom and say, clean your bedroom.
He's like, it's good. Like, it isn't. It isn't. Same idea. Right? There's too much to focus on.
Yeah. If I say, okay. Pick up all of your clothes. I want all of your clothes to be picked up.
That's essentially what we're doing with editing, and when we can start to do that with color coding, huge, huge impact.
Yeah. I mean, I once I get my students in that habit, in that strategy of the color coding, they actually love it, And it's because it breaks it down for them. It doesn't feel as overwhelming. And honestly, they can't wait to get started on this strategy.
Like, get done right and like, okay, hand me the hand me the green, hand me the you know? And they even kinda know where to begin. And this just makes it also visually, it's just easier to see versus just that scanning because their eyes aren't always catching that. And so when they're going through that med draft the first time looking for capitals, right?
Just the capitals. They're able to catch it so much easier. And it's kind of similar in the way of, you know, when we teach kids to chunk reading to break down information, we're teaching kids to chunk their writing down to look at the editing more closely and to make it so much more manageable. And I don't know a single person on this earth who doesn't like things to be more manageable.
Absolutely. It's really just reducing the cognitive load, and that's something that you're hearing a lot about right now is just cognitive load and what can we do to reduce cognitive load. And this is one of those things that you can do. And so thinking about reducing cognitive load, one of the things that I have students do first and foremost when they're editing is to actually break their writing up into individual sentences.
So for example, if we are typing, I'm gonna have them paragraph break so that they can actually see each individual sentence on its own. So instead of this one big chunk of writing, we're actually going to break that up. So each sentence has its own paragraph break. And even if I'm having them do handwriting, they know that when they're writing with me, I actually just want each sentence one at a time, and we'll fix it once we come back to be able to put all of that together.
But, honestly, this is a huge way to that cognitive load where they can see things more clearly. It's not just this big old chunk of stuff that when you look at, you're like, yeah, it's good.
Same thing when I think about cleaning or something. If I see a big old mess, I'm like, I can't even. Right. But if it's, oh no, it's just this one small bit of it, then all of a sudden it feels more manageable.
And so my kids just know that that's part of their writing routine is that we're gonna break that into those individual sentences. Typing obviously makes that easiest, but another great strategy for doing that is actually just having them use I use strips, like a sentence strip and dry erase marker so that they can actually start to kind of put that together and and fix even the overall content because sometimes what you'll realize is, you know what? This sentence actually sounds better up here. Yes.
And students will recognize that, but if they've already written everything out, they're like, no. It's fine. I already wrote the whole thing. It's like if you had a keyboard, like a typewriter instead of a keyboard, and you're like, no.
It's fine.
I'm not gonna rewrite this twenty times.
Yeah. Exactly.
Yeah. You know, honestly, it's the same for me. And the older my students are, the more that I I try to require them to do more of the typing for their writing. And that's just because being as someone who's worked in a middle school, I know that most of their writing is gonna have to be typed out anyway in school, but also in the future.
And so I really like them to start practicing those editing skills while they're typing, looking at moving sentences around, being able to have those line breaks, and also just, honestly, typing skills. You think our kids nowadays would have really great typing skills. They do not. There's a lot of them that do not know where the keys are on the keyboard or how to capitalize without hitting the caps lock button.
So getting them to practice that just makes the whole process kind of come together so that in the future, you know, and I've noticed this with some of my students who we are typing everything up now, It's going a lot faster. Everything's going a lot faster. But, yeah, really whatever strategies you can really find to make, like you said, to take the cognitive load off of our students, but get them practicing and playing around with our sentences, playing around with their writing because it's not just about adding capitals and periods. It's about, does this sound the best that I can make it, or can I continue to revise in this editing process to get my point across even clearer?
Yeah. Absolutely. And so I think regardless of whether you're typing, which I agree, I I just find it easiest to do that even for my younger students, just getting in the habit of that, I think is great. But whether you're typing or you're handwriting, I think too just coming back to that reduction of that cognitive load of, alright, let's break this up so we've got those individual sentences.
Then from there, we'll get the colors out. So like we talked about with color coding. So now to your point, whether it's markers or colored pencils or even on the computer, right, they can change the fonts and things like that or the not the font, but the color of the font. Some of them start changing the fonts. Like like, we don't need to do that. That's not what we're focusing on right now.
But but, you know, all of that, of course, is is part of voice. I understand. I understand.
But what I'll do is I will have them start with basically a red, and I will say we are going to go through each of our sentences, and we're going to think about the subject. So who or what is this sentence about? And let's just make sure in each of our sentences that we have one.
So the beautiful thing is is that now as we're editing, we're also doing some of that grammar work Yes. Without having it in a worksheet because I'm sorry, but the students are just not generalizing from your grammar work Like, just they're not. No. Mean, I've done it.
I've used that. Like, I've I've tried. They they don't care. But when it's their own writing Yep.
Then they do. Yeah. And so, honestly, just have them go through and identify the subject. Who or what is this sentence about?
Let's make sure every sentence needs one. Yep. It's required to have one. So we're either underlining that in red or if I'm having them on the computer, they're just highlighting it in red to be able to show, okay.
Great. There's my subject. Who are what? Then we can have them move into after they've done that for each of their sentences, and usually I will do it in this way where we're gonna do it for all of our sentences.
We're focusing on just the subject for all of them.
Then we'll come back to the predicate for all of them. Let's figure out what did they do. Right. The who or what did what.
What's the action? Like, what happened? Great. Every sentence also needs that. It needs that did what.
And so as long as we have a who or what did what in every sentence, it's structurally sound. It does not need anything else. If it has other stuff, amazing. Great.
But it doesn't need anything else. But every sentence needs at least that. It needs the who or what did what. So that's the first step for my students is basically just that.
Yes. And that's so important because, I mean, so many kids don't even realize that that's what makes up a sentence. And like you said, oh my gosh, I can't even think of one grammar worksheet that has ever helped me in my life. But we want them authentically practicing the things that we're trying to teach, maybe those mini lessons or something we're trying to do in class. And the whole point is that they can do these longer form writings. So even just starting there, who or what did what, that's a huge step for kids.
Huge. Huge. Huge. Huge. And, honestly, we we talk about who or what did what all the time for for so many things, for vocabulary, for fluency, for writing.
So, anyway, if if you do nothing else, just start to make sure your students know who or what did what. Make a huge difference. But then from there, this is where the magic really starts to happen within editing because to your point, the sentence needs that. So as long as it has that, we're good.
But then what I will do is then I will move into, great. Now I want you to find as many conjunctions as you can. And so usually I will put these down for them so that they remember. It's and, but, so, for, but the fancy four, not like The number four.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yes. But but, basically, I'm gonna have them go through and find those conjunctions, and I want them to circle those in yellow.
And part of the reason that this is really helpful is that so many of my students have way too many, like, way, way too You have the and, but, and, so, and, but, so, And before long, their sentence, they realize is really long. It has five or six conjunctions, and then they've also realized, oh, I have five or six subjects and seven predicates. Yeah. You've got a massive run on there, but all of a sudden, they're seeing it, and they're like, oh, I get it.
But also coming back to those grammar worksheets, when you can start to do this, that's where they start to see, oh, I have two subjects and two predicates and I used a conjunction so I have a compound sentence. Yeah. All of a sudden, you're like, oh, now you can tie back your vocabulary that you might need them to actually know. Right.
And they're like, oh, but it's color coded, and so they can see it. Yes. And then it's like, oh, I I get it now. I see what we're working with here, and I don't know.
I just for me, I'm visual, so I just feel like the colors help so much, but it also just the students like it more.
I think it just makes it feel less boring.
I agree. And it's it's all about that practice and and getting them to see what they're doing wrong. If they're out playing some kind of sport, they can see what they're doing wrong or the coach can tell them like, Hey, you're not making the basket because you're shooting this way or you're kicking this way when you actually need be kicking this way. This is a way for teachers to be able to be that coach and be like, do you see why your sentence isn't working because you got too much or not enough? It makes it visual. It makes it so the kids are like, I get what you're talking about now.
That makes so much sense. And I think that analogy is perfect because I remember when I was in high school, I was a diver, and I remember always feeling like, I'm gonna hit the board. I just know I'm gonna hit the board. And my coach would be like, you're not gonna hit the board.
And I'm thinking, okay. But I'm about to do an an inward one and a half where I'm facing towards the board, and my legs are in a pike position, so they're definitely gonna hit the board. And then he got a video camera out, and he started videoing our dives. And then we would watch them, and we'd say, oh, I'm not gonna hit the board.
Yeah. But all of a sudden, it's just that piece of it, that visual. I was like, oh, I get it now. I didn't really understand what you were saying when you were trying to explain it to me, but as soon as you showed me, now I get it.
So I think, yeah, you're absolutely right. It's the same thing with sports. As soon as you just see it Yeah. It makes way more sense, and I know that kids are doing that in music and that kind of thing too.
They're recording it. They're hearing it. Same thing. Right? So this is just a way to make that way more clear.
Alright. So like I said, we wanna make sure that we've got the who or what, did what. So we need the red and the blue. And then if we've got those conjunctions circled, we wanna make sure, at least for my students, I do not want I just tell them, I don't want more than two.
I do not want more than two in your sentence because then our sentence is way too long, again, depending on their age and their ability. So for my younger students, I'm probably telling them just one. Yep. I just want one.
That's it. That's all we can do right now. Yep. And then, of course, as they advance, then we can start to add more in there.
But then I'll move on to our other colors. So for example, I might have them check their capitals in pink. Okay. Great.
We're getting out the pink. We're gonna see. And if there's any capital that needs to be fixed, let's just go ahead and fix that. We'll fix it in pink, and we'll we'll get it fixed up.
It's all good. Again, this is the other reason that it's super helpful to have looked for your who or what did what first. Yeah. Because then what it's already done is it's already helped them realize that they're going to need to break their sentences in more places.
Because I think when I first started, I was trying to follow the acronyms and things like that.
And a lot of them start with C just because C is an easier letter to start a word with, to be honest.
But it's like, okay. I checked for all the capitals, and then I went through and realized that, oh Oh, yep. Oh, hold on. I don't have a subject and a predicate or whatever.
So now all of a sudden, I have way more sentences. So, anyway, all that said, it's good to do that that first check of who or what's did what's. Then we can come in, check for the capitals in another color. Then we might do, for example, punctuation in purple.
K. Great. Now let's check every sentence. We'll see if we have a punctuation. We'll we'll just underline that or add it in purple.
Then we'll practice underlining any words that we're not sure how to spell in orange. And, again, it's just color coding. We're just having them go through and practice, and the colors don't really matter. But Right.
Just stay consistent is one thing that I might suggest.
Yeah. Absolutely. And so using colors and the symbols or the visual tools, like we said, makes that editing feel just more concrete for students who are otherwise gonna feel overwhelmed. And it's breaking up this editing task into more manageable steps, but it also builds transferable skills. Like you said, that structure the sentence structure awareness, the conjunction control because anyone who has ever worked with students in their writing knows we don't actually know how to use conjunctions. No. No.
We do not.
There are so many run on sentences or sentences that just get stopped in the middle, and you're like, no. We're not there.
We're not there. Don't have it.
And even that ownership of spelling, like, so students identifying what they don't know instead of glossing over it. And even if we are doing it typing, think about it, we already have spell check or Grammarly kind of doing that process for us. So it's been like, okay, great. You don't need to fix that right now.
We'll come back to that and we'll look at it and maybe we can break that word down and practice our spelling there, or we can do whatever strategy we need to. So it puts ownership of all these things back into the kids' hands where they start building that confidence, where they start building those moments. Right? And that's where real writing practice and teaching come in.
Absolutely.
And I think, you know, one of the things when you think about editing and why students will be like, no, it's good, is that sometimes they just feel like, I don't know how to fix it. So if I don't know how to fix it, I'm just gonna look at it and be like, yeah, it's great. Whereas to your point, you know, if you're underlining the words, it's just about I'm just not sure about this word. It's not that I have to fix it right now.
It's just, I'm not sure. So I'm recognizing it, and that's a huge, huge step in the right direction. And so I think if you can follow through with this, it really helps students see this as a more active and hands on process, again, especially if you can use the different colors and things like that, makes it more fun, it makes it feel more hands on, then you can move away from this quick glance of like, yeah, it's all good. Actually, to your point that you said earlier, they get excited and they're like, all right, let's get out all the different colors.
Let's let's dive into this.
Yeah. And I think the more we can make kids excited about their writing, the better because, I mean, we are entering a world of AI where so many students are already trying to use AI to to write everything for them. And teachers are really being like, how but how do we teach kids to do their own writing? Well, let's make it more exciting for them.
Right? Let's make it so that they have to do more of the practice on their own so that they know what a good sentence looks like as they grow and as they learn how to become writers themselves. So they're not feeling like they have to just rely on AI. And, you know, I think any of us who can think back to our own writing journey, we know that it takes a long time to become a good writer.
Don't you can't expect to be a good writer in fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade. You get better as you go. And editing is such a big part of that. And I can remember back to my own writing specifically, I'm thinking of my master's thesis when the portion of time that I actually spent writing it versus editing it was so huge.
And that editing process was really, again, looking at what I had written and being like, is this actually what I wanna say, or can I say this better? Can I move these sections around so it's actually more coherent and gets my argument across because I needed this thesis in order to get my master's degree? So it was really important, but I wouldn't have been able to do that with all the practice I had done in school and all the editing I had done in school and learning what does it take to become a good writer.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's such an important piece of it is that this is where your voice gets to show. And so coming back to, yeah, AI and that kind of thing, I think when we just view it as a checklist, if it is just a checklist, if you are going to write, this is what you are going to write about and this is each of the steps that you need to follow and it feels very, I don't know, almost too formulaic, then yeah, why would you not have a machine or a computer do it for you? Yeah.
But when you can say, no, this is how we share our voice and this is how people can understand what it is that we have in our hearts to share, and this is just how we share it so that they can read it more easily. Yeah. That's what we're doing here, and so I think, yeah, I know you're right, it just takes a lot of practice, and I think the more that we can have students practice editing and all of that and editing work that they're excited about is gonna be huge, so.
And don't get us wrong, they will not be excited at first. They're gonna be like, Really?
What?
They'll get there, Okay?
They will. They do. You're right. They come around to it, especially I think when they start to see, oh, I can do this.
It's really like anything once you realize, oh, I actually can do this and I can be really effective at it. They're willing to spend more time and dig deeper into it. And so I think that it's really fun. And I know one of the big objections here is I do not have time for that.
Totally can understand that piece as And so one of the strategies that we talked about in our trainings, have a spotlight PD about all of this. So it's about long form writing, so not just the editing, but the whole process. But one of the things that we shared in that training was just use the time that you have. So if you're like, oh gosh, class is ending in two minutes, then I will give students and I will say, alright, thirty seconds.
Go find as many capitals as you can. Alright, thirty seconds. Let's find as many punctuations as we can. And you can just do it that way.
Right? Thirty seconds. Let's see if we can find any words we're not sure about spelling And almost just turn it into a speed drill so that it just becomes great. Like, this is just something that I'm gonna do real quick.
It's not meant to be a super in-depth editing, but I'm just in the habit of doing it. Yep. It doesn't have to take a ton of time. You can squeeze this into whatever time that you have.
Yeah. Absolutely.
So, anyway, like I said, we have some super helpful strategies, graphic organizers, more information on this process. So if this is exciting to you or you feel like, oh, I would like to see how this goes, definitely check out our Spotlight PD. It's called Long Form Writing Routines, Building Independent Writers, where we talk step by step about how to build these routines. So starting from the beginning of that brainstorming into the drafting and the writing and then through the editing process.
This is such a helpful resource that allows students to find their voice and communicate effectively without the grammar worksheets.
And in our next episode, we will be switching the conversation to fluency and how it's not just about reading faster.
So make sure to subscribe so you don't miss it.
Can't wait.
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