Top 10 Takeaways for the Act of Revision

1.     Students profit best from writing when teachers emphasize more than one writing strategy, and consequently more than one way to revise.

2.    Model asking questions about a text.  This encourages the student to ask him/herself questions about his/her text.  This effectively guides the student to revise his own work before asking help of others.

3.    Conferencing between the students and teacher is at the heart of the writing workshop and necessary to help students become critical readers of their own texts.

4.    There are different kinds of conferences, each with its own goal:  content conference (What do you think of the protagonist?) design conferences (Why did you decide to start your draft this way?), process conference (What problems did you run into while you were gathering entries?), evaluation conferences (What do you think of your essay?)

5.    One step of writing steps does not lead to everyone’s best writing.

6.    The process model is still helpful, for it gives teacher and student a common way of looking at writing, a logical procedure which can be adapted to the needs of the student once it is understood.

7.    Students like writing notes when someone answers.

8.    The spoken word cannot be revised.

9.    The four revision operations include:  deletion, substitution, addition, and reordering.

10.  The four levels of revision include:  words, phrases, sentences, and theme (idea).