Teaching child to edit his own writing

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

I'm not looking for a curriculum, per se, but more a method or process that you have found to be effective.

 

My oldest (8, rising 3rd grade) has a truly beautiful writing voice.  Like as in I cried last week because his paragraph about prehistoric musical instruments was so well done.  No joke, I'm that crazy mother.  

 

Anyway, even words he can spell he spells wrong.  Capitalisation and punctuation are often wrong.  And by often, I actually mean almost always.  

 

If I say something like, "Hey, you need a topic sentence." or "You can probably arrange your ideas a little better," he can see it right off and fix it.  If I ask him to check over spelling, check for capitals, punctuation, it's as though he can't see it at all.  

 

How do you approach these skills at this grade level, and how do you progress?  Ideally, I do not want to add a program like Daily Paragraph Editing, as his own work provides ample material for correction!  I want to get out of the loop of me marking up his paper and him recopying the clean final draft.  I'd like him to do most of the editing himself.  

 

Currently, he is writing across the curriculum, at a rate of about a paragraph per day (in French), plus a copywork sentence per day for handwriting (in English), and 2 sentences of dictation and grammar in his main writing language (French).  Ignore the fact that his writing is mostly in French, as I think editing should be pretty universal as a process.  

 

 

Ideas?  

[Aiden]

Would it help as an intermediary step if you read his work, but didn't mark on it and instead kept track on a separate paper of how many spelling errors, grammar errors, etc., he made? Give him a number of each error type to look for and tell him not to give it back to you until he finds them all. Maybe eventually just a total number of errors without breaking it down by category, and then eventually not even a number, just "There are still errors in this. Fix it."

 

Never been there done that (obviously, based on the age of my child), but I think I may try something like this to see if he's currently capable of finding the errors when he knows what he's looking for (and to train him in that if he isn't currently capable), and then gradually weaning him off my assistance even in that.

[EKS]

First of all, he is *very* young for this!  My point being that you have many years to get it right.

 

That said, I'd sit with him and scaffold the process.  Separate spelling from punctuation from capitalization from grammar.  Then go through sentence by sentence.  You can even say things like, "I see two punctuation errors in this sentence."  Or you could get more specific at first:  "I see one missing comma and one misplaced comma."  Or whatever.  Over time, he should be able to take over more and more of the process himself.  Spelling might be the last to go--though presumably his spelling will improve over time as well.

 

For grammar/wording errors, read his work aloud to him--he will likely detect many errors this way.  After a while, have him do the reading aloud.

 

I don't think that the answer is another resource unless he simply doesn't know the rules.  If that is the case, Hake is amazing.

[Ellie]

I'm not looking for a curriculum, per se, but more a method or process that you have found to be effective.

 

My oldest (8, rising 3rd grade) has a truly beautiful writing voice.  Like as in I cried last week because his paragraph about prehistoric musical instruments was so well done.  No joke, I'm that crazy mother.  

 

Anyway, even words he can spell he spells wrong.  Capitalisation and punctuation are often wrong.  And by often, I actually mean almost always.  

 

If I say something like, "Hey, you need a topic sentence." or "You can probably arrange your ideas a little better," he can see it right off and fix it.  If I ask him to check over spelling, check for capitals, punctuation, it's as though he can't see it at all.  

 

How do you approach these skills at this grade level, and how do you progress?  Ideally, I do not want to add a program like Daily Paragraph Editing, as his own work provides ample material for correction!  I want to get out of the loop of me marking up his paper and him recopying the clean final draft.  I'd like him to do most of the editing himself.  

 

Currently, he is writing across the curriculum, at a rate of about a paragraph per day (in French), plus a copywork sentence per day for handwriting (in English), and 2 sentences of dictation and grammar in his main writing language (French).  Ignore the fact that his writing is mostly in French, as I think editing should be pretty universal as a process.  

 

 

Ideas?  

 

At his age (grade level isn't really relevant), you'd be teaching and teaching and teaching capitalization, punctuation, and spelling separate from the writing. I don't think it's possible, really, to expect an 8yo to do much editing on his own yet. What if you did some dictation in English, and then helped him edit that? (which would still be separate from any capitalization, spelling, and punctuation instruction; there needs to be actual instruction, not just copywork). Then when he does writing on his own, remind him to check for any errors, and you make the corrections. With red ink.

[lllll]

nm

[Lori D.]

The following is meant in all gentleness, as I totally understand that you want the best for your students and want to foster independent learning and ability. :)

 

My oldest (8, rising 3rd grade) has a truly beautiful writing voice… Anyway, even words he can spell he spells wrong.  Capitalisation and punctuation are often wrong.  And by often, I actually mean almost always.  

 

This is extremely normal for an 8yo. This means the child is using most of the brain for thinking of what to write, and the spelling ability part of the brain has been pushed to the back to allow the writing portion of the brain to have the lion's share of energy and activity. That's why he wrote beautifully. :) This is all good and normal -- your DS actually sounds advanced in his writing abilities! :)

 

Developmentally, I would not expect a student below about age 10-11 to be able to do some (note: not all) simultaneous writing and editing (for spelling, punctuation, and capitalization) in ANY language, much less a young student who is switching back and forth between 2-3 languages.

 

It's important to understand that there are 3 very separate activities going on in the brain, requiring development/maturation of 3 very different areas of the brain with writing:

1. thinking of what to say

2. physical act of writing

3. spelling (and grammar mechanics) / editing (i.e., catching some errors while in the midst of writing)

 

Most students are not able to mentally juggle all 3 of these activities simultaneously until about age 10-12. Some students do not even mature one or more of those areas of the brain until age 12-14 (we had a very late-bloomer for "getting" spelling), which means not being able to simultaneously juggle all skills until about age 16-18. And franklysome people absolutely never are able to do these simultaneously.

 

Also, below about age 10-12, most students are not fluent in typing, so every step of the writing process means laboriously re-writing by hand. Note the intentional use of the word laborious. That means a lot of students will shut down their writing to try and avoid re-writes by hand. (Again, our late-bloomer DS was the master of 4-5 word sentences, using all 2-4 letter words to try and avoid mistakes, and thus, re-writes  :tongue_smilie: -- the result was disastrous for trying to elicit good writing skills.)

 

I don't know where your DS would fall in the developmental range, but I had an average writer DS, and a struggling writer DS (mild LDs). The average writer was not able to start self-edit until middle school grades; the struggling writer was not able to start self-editing until about 11th grade. Notice the word "start" -- again, all of this is a process over time; editing your own writing is not a skill learned overnight and forever after applied. ;)

 

 

If I say something like, "Hey, you need a topic sentence." or "You can probably arrange your ideas a little better," he can see it right off and fix it.  If I ask him to check over spelling, check for capitals, punctuation, it's as though he can't see it at all.  

 

Again, this is absolutely normal. The writing process develops very slowly over time. Just as you would expect your 8yo DS to be able to do basic math skills (add, subtract, multiply and divide), you would NOT simultaneously expect your 8yo son to be able to apply those basic math skills to fractions, or algebraic equations. You expect that the math is a process that builds on foundational skills that increasingly apply to more complex math topics. Same with writing. I would not expect the average student below age 12, to be ready for doing *most* of the editing himself/herself without any prompting.

 

In fact, it's quite advanced that you can say to your DS, "you need a topic sentence" or "you can arrange your ideas a little better", and your DS can run with just that small comment and know how to *apply* that comment AND how to *fix* it himself! A lot of middle school and high school students in my Lit. & Comp. classes are still struggling to do that when I make those types of comments on their papers.

 

 

How do you approach these skills at this grade level, and how do you progress?  Ideally, I do not want to add a program like Daily Paragraph Editing, as his own work provides ample material for correction!  I want to get out of the loop of me marking up his paper and him recopying the clean final draft.  I'd like him to do most of the editing himself.  

 

At ages 7-12, I emphasized repeatedly that writing is a PROCESS:

1. brainstorming / organizing / key word outline

2. rough draft

3. revision (add/subtract, change, re-order, etc.)

4. proof-editing (spelling, punctuation, capitalization, subject-verb agreement, sentence fragment/run-on, etc.)

5. final copy

 

I walked alongside my students, working side-by-side with them heavily in whatever areas they esp. needed help in -- whether in brainstorming/organizing (ages 7-12), having them dictate and I write for them for rough draft (ages 7-9), revising (ages 7-11), and me marking editing/they fixing errors (ages 7-12+) and they begin to self-edit (age 11-12). For many assignments, they needed me less; for some they needed me more.

 

During the early elementary years, we did do some early editing practice. As soon as when they finished writing their paragraph or their copywork, I would say, "Time for tip-tap!" They would put their pencil point on the start of each sentence to check for a capital letter ('tip"), and then on the end of the sentence to check for punctuation ("tap"). Checking for spelling and other errors was done at a later time, because most brains -- and esp. young developing brains -- need a little bit of time/distance from the actual writing in order to shift gears and to be able to actually "see" errors. Ideally, if the writing is done in the morning, do your editing after lunch in the afternoon; or if done in the afternoon, then save the editing for the following morning. You can slowly close that time gap between the steps of writing and editing over time as your student's brain develops and needs less time to switch gears -- so, eventually your student may only need 10-30 minutes between writing and editing to be able to mentally get enough "distance" from the writing to now put on the "editing glasses" to actually see errors.

 

For ages 10-11 we did incorporate editing practice with a VERY short, 2-3 sentence a day 3x/week from Take Five Minutes: A History Fact a Day, to practice editing skills from someone else's writing. It was easier for DSs to first see mistakes in someone else's writing rather than their own. And then seeing the same mistakes a number of times trained DSs to LOOK for those mistakes when editing -- not only in the practice program, but then transferring that to their own writing. At least, it had that effect for our DSs. In the middle/high school years, I had DSs do a paragraph a day 2-3x/week that not only kept up editing skills, but also was a great light Grammar review for their own writing -- Giggles in the Middle (middle school), and The Chortling Bard (high school).

 

 

 I want to get out of the loop of me marking up his paper and him recopying the clean final draft.  I'd like him to do most of the editing himself.  

 

I would not expect the average student below age 12 to be able to edit largely on their own. Just a thought: if you want to be out of the loop at this age, consider hiring tutor or pay for an online resource to oversee the writing so you don't have to stress about it.

 

Another thought would be to make this more of a "together" process as needed, on an assignment by assignment basis -- DS dictating to you for rough draft; or discussing editing while in the process of writing; or at the proofing stage, together play "catch the error" in an "I Spy" kind of way: "Oh, I see something that needs to be fixed in sentence #1! Do you want a hint -- it's spelling (or punctuation, or capitalization)."). You may find working together toward the mutual goal of maturing the writing process less frustrating than the more  formal "teacher-student" process (you assign, he writes, you grade, he edits and submits another copy, you do final grade), which tends to keep you focused on just mistakes and weak areas. Just a thought! :)

 

 

Currently, he is writing across the curriculum, at a rate of about a paragraph per day (in French), plus a copywork sentence per day for handwriting (in English), and 2 sentences of dictation and grammar in his main writing language (French). 

 

Sounds like you're right at a good level of writing for your DS, esp. working in 2 languages! :)

 

 

I think editing should be pretty universal as a process.  

 

I agree. Typically, it's a skill that doesn't tend to develop in the average student until more along the middle/high school years. :)

 

BEST of luck in your writing and editing journey! :) Warmest regards, Lori D.

[MinivanMom]

I start teaching my kids to edit their own writing in 1st grade. I teach the writing process (prewrite, draft, revise, edit, publish), so we naturally go through two separate steps for revising and editing. First we work with ideas and organization when they revise, and then we work with spelling, grammar, and punctuation when they edit. I actually use two different colored pens (blue for revising and red for editing) to make it very clear.

 

When they edit I teach them to:

-Say each word aloud as they are editing (even if they just whisper it to themselves).

-Point to each word with the red pen as they say it (which seems to help them see the errors better).

-Edit first for spelling and then for punctuation & capitalization. It is just too much for them to check for any kind of error initially. They have to be specifically looking at just the spelling or at just the mechanics.

 

After they have gone through their writing twice (and I do edit with them at first until they get the hang of it), then I will sit beside them and check for any errors they missed. I will correct the errors with my red pen, but, as I do so, I always explain their mistake aloud. As in, "Oh, look, you misspelled the word 'musical' in your writing. It is just the word 'music' and then the suffix is spelled with an 'a - l' at the end," or I might say, "You forgot a comma here. You always need commas between items in a series." It just provides an opportunity to really focus their attention on their errors and talk through the underlying concept rather than just giving them a marked up piece of writing to mindlessly recopy.

 

My oldest transitioned to revising and editing all in one step at around the age of 10. She was ready at that point, but she has always been a natural and fairly advanced writer. My oldest son, who is now 10, still needs to do each of the steps separately or he will miss his errors.

[AdventuresinHomeschooling]

I agree on the grammar program that teaches mechanics and usage. Also, maybe you could teach him the editing symbols. Sometimes, it is more fun when you can use all the funny squiggles, etc. Maybe have some bad examples to work on. Sometimes it's easier to see when it is something someone else wrote. When he sees his own work, he sees it as he wrote it in his mind and not what is actually on the paper.