Revising and Editing
by STAAR-light
Kaye Price-Hawkins, Consultant
Priceless Literacy
www.pricelessliteracy.homestead.com
Why do we need to teach
Revision and CUPSS?*
Capitalization
Usage
Punctuation
Sentence structure
Spelling
A building that has dirty
windows, crooked shades,
peeling pain, etc., needs a
make-over rather than total
demolition!
*CUPSS image-page on Priceless Literacy website
How do we teach grammar
and conventions?

Workshop
 Mini-lessons (many sources)
 Writing (Process)
 Conference (questions)
 Revision (various processes)
 Re-writing (multiple drafts)
Improvement vs Correction
Analysis Process:
 Create opportunities
to analyze and
compose
 Anchor (Mentor)
texts
 Student texts
 Personal texts
What do you
notice the writer
did well?
______________
What suggestions
would you give
for improvement?
Anchor Text
Diagnosis
by Sharon Olds
By the time I was six months old, she knew something
was wrong with me. I got looks on my face
she had not seen on any child
in the family, or the extended family,
or the neighborhood. My mother took me in
to the pediatrician with the kind hands,
a doctor with a name like a suit size for a wheel:
Hub Long. My mom did not tell him
what she thought in truth, that I was Possessed.
It was just these strange looks on my face—
he held me, and conversed with me,
chatting as one does with a baby, and my mother
said, She's doing it now! Look!
She's doing it now! and the doctor said,
What your daughter has
is called a sense
of humor. Ohhh, she said, and took me
back to the house where that sense would be tested
and found to be incurable.
Student Sample (English I):
Humanity has a funny way of contradicting itself sometimes. All
children are taught to share and put others’ needs before our own.
Somewhere down the line we realize that the very people who preach
these things to us don’t follow their own rules. It is very important in
society today to remember the bigger picture, which often includes
doing things to help others with no benefit to yourself.
People use each other for personal gain all the time. A glorified
outlook on this way of life is all around us. In media people are more
concerned with which Hollywood star is going out with which
millionaire rather than the thousands of people dying of hunger in third
world countries. As consumers we see this life and wish to be like that.
Doing something for monitary gain is just like money itself: easily
expendable and transient. But doing something to help others leads to
emotional or moral gain. The memmories and feelings you get from
helping others won’t ever go away. It’s worth something to you. Worth
more than money ever could be.
Mini-Lessons for Revising
and Editing *
*Cards for Revising/Editing on Writing page on my website
*Small Sensory Strip page on my Reading page.
Resources:
Anderson, Jeff. 2007. Everyday Editing. Stenhouse.
---, 2005. Mechanically Inclined: Building Grammar, Usage, and Style into Writer's Workshop. Stenhouse.
Burke, Jim. 2008. The English Teacher’s Companion. Heinemann.
Campbell, Cathy. 2008. The Giggly Guide to Grammar. Discover Writing Press.
Carroll, Joyce Armstrong and Edward Wilson. 2010. Brushing Up on Grammar. Libraries Unlimited.
Carroll, Joyce Armstrong. 2011. Ratiocination. Absey & Co.
Fogarty, Mignon. 2008. Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. Holt Paperbacks.
---, 2011. Grammar Girl’s 101 Misused Words You’ll Never Confuse Again. St. Martin’s.
Gallagher, Kelly. 2011. Write Like This. Stenhouse.
Knapp, Peter and Megan Watkins. 2005. Genre, Text, Grammar. University of New South Wales Press Ltd.
Noden, Harry. 2011. Image Grammar: Using Grammatical Structures to Teach, 2nd Ed.. Boynton/Cook, Pub.
---. 2011. Image Grammar: Second Edition: Teaching Grammar as Part of the Writing Process. Heinemann.
Petersen, David. 2007. Reading English News on the Internet. Lulu.Com. (new edition: 2011).
Sebranek, Patrick, Dave Kemper, Verne Meyer and Gretchen Bernabei. 2012. Texas Write Source.
Grades 2-12. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
Tchudi, Susan and Stephen Tchudi. 1999. The English Language Arts Handbook. Boynton/Cook Publishers.
Terban, Marvin. 1993. Checking Your Grammar. Scholastic Inc.
Thurman, Susan. 2003. The Only Grammar Book You’ll Ever Need. Avon. MA: Adams Media.
Weaver, Constance. 1996. Teaching Grammar in Context. Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc.
Windsor, Lucinda. 2000. Grammar in Story. (2 books). Absey & Co.
Woods, Geraldine. 2010. English Grammar for Dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc.