Welcome to HIT—How I Teach….In this episode, I continue teaching about using a checklist for revising reports, essays, and stories—including how to teach students to code their edits and changes for quick and thorough grading. I do this with a systematic revising approach that becomes habitual for students and is measurable for the teacher.
With my Checklist Challenge for revising writing, students are taught exactly what to do and how to mark changes so their teacher can grade their “colorful copy”—as we like to call it in my classes. This week we continued with the “Elves and the Shoemaker” paper and how to revise it using the following:
- Thesis Statement
- Thesis Statement “Reloaded”
- Transition sentences
- Compound sentences
- Words never used in writing before
- Redundancy omission
- Sentence openers
- Semicolons
- And more!
I also explained how to make a checklist easier for younger students (second or third graders) and more challenging for older students (up through high school).
In all of my How To Lessons (found in all first semester Meaningful Composition books up through grade nine and all month-long downloadable books in the Tools and Tricks line), students are taught how to do each revising task one at a time with a color-coded sample to follow as they make changes to a given essay (or their own). Each CC task is introduced on a separate page and thoroughly taught.
In this episode of HIT, you will find a full How to CC lessons (in your Teacher’s Notebook) for third graders through ninth graders. In the video, I toggle back and forth between the lessons and the sample already-coded chart and story. It is truly the best way to learn how to teach writing revisions!
This is the exact protocol I use with all 50-60 of my writing and language arts students every year—and it works wonderfully and turns out amazing writers and revisers! This is part II of a two part HIT lesson, so be sure to watch last week’s episode here.
Of course, just like every lesson in my one-month downloadable books and my one-semester Meaningful Composition books, this one also has the invaluable samples to take the guess work out of the lessons!
And for your convenience, How I Teach…. is available as a podcast (follow along in your TN sheets for that week) and a Youtube video (with Power Point containing the same as the TN)!
Note: This lesson came from Tools and Tricks II, a month-long, downloadable book from the Write-for-a-Month series.
Find everything you need here!
Weekly broadcast episodes with Teacher’s Notebook downloads (and links to listen or watch!) at the Language Arts Lady blog
Master (continually updated) Teacher’s Notebook downloadable booklet
Free writing books and videos of me teaching your students for you for a couple of weeks!
All of my digital books
How I Teach YouTube Channel
How I Teach Podcast
