The Writing Process: Revising

November 3, 2010

Student writing displayed on a bulletin board

The students are finishing up their writings they have been working on for about a week.  My teacher was conducting conferences today with the students.  She was helping them reflect back on their writing and how they could revise it.  She would ask them questions like, "Why did you write about this topic?" "What do you mean by _________?" "How could you add more details?"  The teacher was very encouraging and supportive with the students' ideas.  She found ways to improve every students' writing, while complimenting them too. 

We have spent a lot of class time talking about the writing process.  We have learned that revising is more about ideas and changing those ideas; it isn't about grammar and punctuation.  The teacher helped students narrow their topic if their stories were really scattered and focused on several ideas.  She would ask questions to help with adding details.  For instance, one boy wrote about his trip to McDonald's.  She asked questions like, "Was the line long?" "What did you order?" "Did your brother or sister go with you?" This caused the children to think further into their writing and decide what they could add.  She had the students reread their stories several times to see if they left anything out.  She didn't have the students erase; she had them mark through words.  Some students would get frustrated when the teacher would suggest ideas to improve their writing.  She just continued to encourage them and emphasize that she was only helping them become better writers.

I really liked watching the teacher conduct these conferences.  She even allowed me to conference with a student.  It was so neat to see how their writing improved after having these conferences.  I really liked how the teacher continued to compliment the students.  She made every student feel confident about themselves as a writer.  She suggested to almost every student something different to work on.  I could tell how helpful these conferences were for the students too.  Like I said, a lot of them had their ideas scattered on the page, so the conference helped them them to narrow down their ideas.