How do you teach editing skills to elementary students? What are some strategies for revising writing? If you have ever asked these questions or anything similar, you’re in the right place! This post shares ideas that help with effective editing practice for upper elementary students. These revision exercises can be used for in-person and online learning.
PLUS you can grab some FREE editing and proofreading worksheets to use in your classroom.
The Main Problem with Editing Practice for Upper Elementary
Why do we need to teach revising in the writing process? Well, in a nutshell, it’s because every writer makes mistakes during the process.
Since our students are still learning important grammar rules, they are bound to make mistakes.
This makes editing practice for upper elementary essential!
But there’s one huge problem I’ve run into when teaching proofreading: getting students to apply it to their own writing.
Usually the process flows like this:
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not against mentor sentences or practicing grammar apart from writing.
In fact, I LOVE having daily grammar practice to sharpen those skills.
But in this post, I want to share effective ways to connect editing with writing. Not only that, but these ideas go beyond simple sentences with editing longer paragraphs.
Even though I adore using guessing games in the classroom, I don’t think they work for budding proofreaders.
For students who especially struggle with editing, having guidelines boost their confidence because they know what they are looking for.
So when I start teaching revising, I give my students a checklist of the types of errors they should correct.
We begin this process by focusing on paragraph correction worksheets before applying the checklist to their own paragraph writing.
This editing practice for upper elementary students works whether we are doing a whole group lesson or literacy centers.
By using these editing checklists consistently, students build “proofreading habits” that become second nature when they are correcting their own writing later.
The one caveat I will give here is that you must MODEL for your students how to use the checklist correctly!
Don’t just assume that they will refer to it on their own the very first time.
For this activity, I love the “I Do, We Do, You Do” approach. It allows me to demonstrate the correct editing technique, then monitor their practice before allowing them to use it independently.
In the first section, I mentioned a little word that leads to big results: HABITS.
After reading Atomic Habits by James Clear, I started looking for ways to apply his theories about habit building in my teaching.
Instead of being overwhelmed by one big writing unit, I make time for smaller editing assignments each day.
Around 10-15 minutes works for me.
I started asking myself, “In what ways am I allowing editing practice for my students?”
This question led to a list of ideas that can be used for upper elementary students:
This is not the full list, but they are some of my favorite examples that have worked over the years.
To piggyback off the previous section, I have found amazing results with my students in the past when I spiraled my grammar lessons.
So first of all, what does it mean to “spiral” your lessons?
Spiral review in the classroom means that you are addressing skills and concepts repeatedly throughout the school year.
It is the opposite of just teaching a unit or academic standard once, testing students, then moving on.
When I spiral my grammar lessons, students complete weekly paragraph editing worksheets that revisit the revising skills we’ve already practiced.
Since they are combining this with editing checklists, they are getting effective practice every single week.
This video clip shows all of the academic standards that are covered in my 40-week grammar editing worksheet set which is available HERE in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.
This is actually a bonus win-win they are getting practice editing AND practice reading informational text passages.
Once I teach students how to use our editing checklists and how to rewrite the paragraph correctly, then they can complete these independently while I focus on teaching a small group.
That’s the power of a good no-prep, spiraled grammar activity!
As long as I choose high-interest topics, students are free to consistently work on building their editing and writing skills.
To give you more insight into the types of topics I use, here’s a YouTube video that shows my Weekly Paragraph Editing Set with 40 weeks of spiraled revising and writing practice:
