By The Daring English Teacher
I’ve changed how I teach, assign, and practice classroom writing more since the end of 2022 (when ChatGPT was released) than I had in my 15 years of teaching before that. ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence models have forced educators to rethink how we do almost everything in the classroom.
A couple of school years ago, I switched from writing essays in Google Docs to only having in-class writing assignments in a lockdown browser. I start with paragraphs at the beginning of the year, and slowly, we work our way up to teaching and assigning complete essays. And while that works and helps me stay a half a step ahead of students on the technology front, it isn’t entirely conducive to the natural writing process, particularly with essay revisions.
One of the best ways for students to grow as writers is by revisiting their older work and revising it. Revision helps students see that writing is a process and that there is always room for improvement. Additionally, students develop as writers when they learn to revise their work in meaningful ways. So, this school year, I tried something new for writing revisions, and I am thrilled with the results.
Focused Writing Revisions
One mistake I am definitely guilty of making is assigning too big of a writing task for my students before they are ready for it. And oftentimes, assigning essay or paragraph revisions falls in the same category—it is just too much for students to handle. When we tell our students to revise their essays, that task can be quite overwhelming. So many students will wonder where to even start.
Instead, providing students with a focused revision assignment is more beneficial because, rather than focusing on the entire essay, students concentrate their efforts on small, select revisions that truly make a difference. Additionally, these types of revision activities also stick with students for future writing!
Before assigning a revision activity, I teach my students focused writing lessons. One of my favorite ways to help students improve as writers is to learn how to write stronger commentary sentences. My Writing Spotlight: Commentary Writing lesson is a great starting point to help students graduate from “This quote shows…” to more advanced writing styles.
In addition to teaching the lessons in my Writing Spotlight lesson series, I also like to teach my students about parallel structure and sentence structure.
After spending a couple of days teaching my students a focused writing lesson, I had my students go back and revise a paragraph they had written earlier in the year. And honestly, the older the writing assignment is, the better, because your students have grown so much since their older writing assignments. I created this revision activity and printed it double-sided for students. You can grab a PDF version of this revision activity for free right here! You can also receive an editable Google Doc version that you can customize to your assignments here!
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Avoid the Entire Piece
Another reason this revision activity was so beneficial is that I didn’t require students to revise everything. They only revised three sentences: the thesis statement, an evidence sentence, and a commentary sentence. Additionally, I also wanted my students to write an additional commentary sentence to help them see how additional analysis can strengthen their writing.On the paper, students wrote their original sentences, and then right next to them, I had them write their revised sentences. This helped the students see the improvement side by side!
Add in Reflection
For this revision activity, I wanted to get them thinking about the how and why behind their revisions to encourage them to actively think about their writing. I also had them explain why they made the revisions they did, how the revisions improved their writing, and what they will focus on in the future.Self-revision isn't the only way to conduct revisions in class, though. Another great way to help students grow as writers is to complete peer revisions in class. When I facilitate peer editing in my classroom, I like to alternate between using a peer editing checklist and peer editing stations.
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Overall, this revision assignment was a huge success in my class. Not only did I see significant improvement, but I also observed my students pausing to take a moment and really think about and reflect on their writing. After all, isn't that what we are aiming for as teachers?
Additional Resources:
The Future of ChatGPT and AI in the ELA Classroom by Tracee Orman
Teaching Thinking and Writing in the Age of AI by Room 213
