Revision Magic: Elevate Your Students' Writing Skills with 4 Simple, Yet Effective Strategies

When students embark on the revision phase of their writing journey, it’s a fantastic opportunity for them to put their sentence-writing skills to good use and enhance the overall quality of their compositions.

If you’ve been diligently focusing on honing these sentence-level writing abilities with your students or implementing our tried-and-true Sentence Writing Routine, then revising need not be an intimidating prospect – not for your students, and certainly not for you, as their dedicated teacher!

When we think of the writing process, we think of the following steps:

Brainstorm: The initial step where students let their creativity flow, generating ideas and concepts that will form the basis of their writing.
Outline: This is where the blueprint of their work takes shape, organizing thoughts and ideas into a structured framework.
Draft: The moment when students translate their outlined ideas into a first draft, allowing their thoughts to flow onto the paper.
Revise: Now, this is the stage we’ll be focusing on today, and it’s worth highlighting that while revision can be a challenging aspect of the writing process to teach, it is undeniably one of the most crucial steps.
Edit: The fine-tuning phase, where students correct grammatical errors, punctuation, and spelling mistakes.
Publish: The exciting culmination of their hard work, where students proudly present their polished pieces to the world.

Revision, as I mentioned earlier, is often perceived as a daunting task, but its significance cannot be overstated. It provides students with the opportunity to make substantial improvements to their writing. More importantly, it paves the way for their writing to become smoother and more coherent – a quality we all strive for in our students’ work.

And revision can feel really hard to teach! But we don’t want to skip over it because of this reason. I have four revision strategies to share with you that will make you feel more confident teaching your students this step of the writing process.

But first, a few important notes of revision. . .

Don’t worry about your students having to REVISE everything at once. Take your time and go slow.
Teach your students one revision strategy at a time.
Give them time to practice revising. don’t expect them to master a strategy after ONE lesson or one attempt at applying it.
Give them feedback when possible.

Alright, let’s get into the four revision strategies that will help your students improve their writing!

Revision Strategy #1: Improve Word Choice

When you improve word choice, you aim to replace ordinary or common words with ones that are more descriptive, specific, or impactful to better communicate your intended message.This is definitely a skill we want our students to practice.

We want our students to use words that are accurate and engaging in their writing.

For example, you might have a student that wrote the sentence: The dog ran fast in the park.
If they revise that sentence for word choice, they might choose some more specific and interesting words and end up with the sentence: “The greyhound sprinted swiftly across the sunlit meadow.”
The reader can create a much clearer picture of the text with the revised version.

Whether your students are crafting a captivating narrative or tackling the informative realm of expository writing, there’s one golden rule they should always remember: choose words that are vivid and varied. It’s like adding a splash of color to a canvas – it brings their writing to life.

This means we need to intentionally remind them to vary their word choice and spend time THINKING about the specific words to use in their writing. Teaching them to improve word choice during the revision stage of writing is one way you can do that.

How does this improve student writing?

When students focus on improving their word choice, they are going to write more descriptive text which will just elevate the quality of their writing
It will be easier for their readers to visualize, understand, and enjoy what they are reading.
Improving word choice is a simple way to help students become more sophisticated writers.

How to teach it?

There are many approaches you can take to teaching word choice improvement. We suggest trying the following:

When students are revising, have them underline or circle 3-5 words that are “boring” or common words.
Then have them use a thesaurus or dictionary to look up more interesting or specific words.
Have students read the sentence aloud, switching out the underlined word for more interesting words to see which new word works best.
This could also be done with partners! Getting a peer’s feedback can help them choose the best word to improve the sentence.

Revision Strategy #2: Use Transition Words

When you use transition words, you connect ideas and guide readers through your writing. Transition words like “before”, “after”, and “for instance” help clarify the relationship between a student’s thoughts and their writing.

We want students to use transition words in their writing so their reader has an easier time reading and keeping track of ideas they are sharing.

For example, if a student writes “I went for a swim with my friend. We had ice cream.” We don’t quite know the relationship between those two events. Did they eat ice cream before swimming, during swimming…. two weeks later?

Transition words can improve this sentence! “In the morning I went for a swim with my friend, afterwards, we got ice cream. The transition words ‘in the morning’ and ‘afterwords” helps the reader conceptualize the time and sequence of events.

How does this improve student writing?

When students use transition words, they will be able to clearly communicate any connection or relationship between ideas in their writing.
Using transition words makes writing more readable and easier to understand and follow.

It’s important to introduce the idea of transition words to your students before you expect them to use them while writing or during the revision process.

And it is important for students to understand there are different categories of transition words to use in their writing. We often focus so much time on time order transitions like first, next, then, last. . . But there are so many others students should be using in their writing!

We suggest introducing students to the following transition word categories:

Time and Sequence: first, next, then, before, later, after awhile, during, meanwhile
Illustration: for example, for instance, specifically, like, including
Change of Direction: however, even though, but, instead, on the other hand
Conclusion: in conclusion, as a result, finally, in the end, thus

Once students are familiar with the different types of transition words, the next step is to help them understand how to use them in their own writing.

How to teach it?

This is a little bit trickier, because students need to understand when to use the different types of transition words.

A really easy way to help students get started with transition words is to start with their conclusion. Since every paragraph will have a conclusion, you can give them a list of conclusion transition words and have them add a concluding transition to their writing.
If students are writing a narrative, encourage them to use time and sequence transitions.
If students are writing expository, descriptive, or opinion, have them practice using illustration transition words.
Have students practice using change of direction transition words when writing an argumentative paragraph.

Revision Strategy #3: Add More Details

Adding more details to your writing is like turning up the brightness on a picture – it makes everything clearer and more vivid. Whether your students are describing a scene or explaining a concept, providing those extra details is key to keeping readers engaged and ensuring they fully grasp the message.

This is a skill we want our young writers to hone as they progress. When students infuse more details into their sentences, it’s not just about adding length; it’s about crafting sentences with diverse structures that naturally enhance the flow and readability of their writing.

Let’s take a simple sentence, for example: “I read a book.” It’s plain, straightforward, and honestly, a bit dull.
What we encourage our students to do is to sprinkle their writing with those juicy details, transforming it into something more like this: “On a sunny Sunday morning, I eagerly delved into an exciting ‘Magic Tree House’ adventure by Mary Pope Osborne.”
Now, that sentence is a game-changer. It not only tells the reader about the book but also shares the series, the author, the genre, the reader’s feelings, and even when and where it was enjoyed.

Details are their secret weapons. They make writing come alive and ensure that students’ voices are heard loud and clear. It’s the art of storytelling in action!

How does this improve student writing?

Detailed writing captures the reader’s attention and keeps them engaged. When readers can vividly imagine the scenes or concepts being described, they are more likely to stay interested in the text.
More details add depth to the writing. It shows that students have thought deeply about their topic and are not just skimming the surface. This depth of thought is often a hallmark of more advanced and mature writing.
Writing with details is essentially storytelling. It allows students to create narratives and convey their thoughts and emotions effectively. It’s a valuable skill not just in academics but in everyday communication as well.

How to teach it?

A simple way to teach students how to add more details is by using the 5W Questions.

Remember, not every sentence in a paragraph needs to be revised. Remind your students of this too! Have students start with one sentence and then they can work on more sentences as they get better at this revision strategy.

Have students self identify a sentence in their paragraph they want to revise.
Encourage them to use the 5W Questions to add details to the sentence.

Example: I read a book. This sentence answers who and what.

When did I read a book? last sunday
Where did I read a book? Oo the back porch
How was I reading the book? engrossed
Why was I reading the book? my favorite series

Improved Sentence: Last Sunday, I spent the entire afternoon on our back porch engrossed in an exciting Magic Tree House book, which is my favorite series.

Using the 5W Questions is a great tool students can use to add details to sentences during the revision stage. Don’t forget to remind them that not every single sentence needs to be revised to add details.

Revision Strategy #4: Use a Variety of Sentences

Incorporating a mix of short and longer, more complex sentences is a way to make writing more dynamic and engaging. Variety keeps the reader’s interest and helps emphasize important points, as well as creates rhythm.

We don’t want students to only use short sentences.

We don’t want students to only use long, wordy sentences.

There needs to be a mix!

How does this improve student writing?

Varied sentence lengths and structures keep readers intrigued and invested in the text, preventing monotony and maintaining their interest.
By avoiding an excess of wordy sentences, writing becomes more accessible and reader-friendly, making it easier for the audience to follow along.
Varied sentence structures enable students to express themselves more creatively and persuasively, enhancing their ability to convey complex ideas.

How to teach it?

One thing you can do is have students color code sentences they have written. You could do this a couple different ways:

Color code different sentence types like questions, commands, statements, and exclamations.
Then, color code sentence structures like simple, compound, complex.

Have students use a paragraph they have already written and go through the process of identifying and highlighting different types of sentences.

If students notice that ALL their sentences are the same type of sentence, then that’s a sign that they need to select at least one sentence and rewrite it to provide some variety.

The journey of teaching students the art of revision is a rewarding one. It’s a chance to mold them into more proficient and expressive writers. As educators, our role is not only to impart knowledge but also to inspire and empower our students to become better communicators through the written word.

It’s important to remember that the revision process takes time and patience. Students may not master these strategies in a single lesson or revision attempt. Therefore, offering consistent guidance and constructive feedback is essential for their growth.

Think about your next steps…

If you don’t feel like your students are quite ready to revise sentences in their own writing, grab our Sentence Writing Routine freebie and have them become more familiar with writing sentences with targeted practice first!
Check out Episode #167 of my podcast to get even more information on these four revision strategies! You can listen to Stellar Teacher Podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon, Spotify, Castbox, and more!
Join us inside The Stellar Literacy Collective, where you will get access to a resource library filled with reading and writing resources that will help you feel more confident in your literacy instruction AND help you students become proficient writers! P.S. Doors are opening again soon! You don’t want to miss out. Check out our Membership webpage for more details.