How to help your child edit a report or story

It is difficult to convince some children that their writing can be improved. Many children don't like admitting that they are less than perfect and most don't want to keep working on assignments that they think are completed. Teachers of the writing process emphasize that every good report or story goes through several drafts with revisions and editing. However, it takes a lot of patience and repetition to "sell" this concept to second and third graders. They find it nearly impossible to believe that professional writers must revise and edit their work. Here is a step-by -step guide for parents who are helping their children through the editing process.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Written report or story that needs to be edited
• Highlighter
• Pen or pencil that writes a different color from the one used to write the draft
• Paper for the final copy

1. Obtain a status report from your child. This will help you to resist the temptation to tell your child how to revise and edit his story or report. Instead, coach him so that the decisions are his. In order to do this effectively, ask your child to explain the assignment so that you are familiar with its topic, audience, purpose and format. You should also discover whether this is the first draft or if there has already been a review process. Ask how satisfied your child is with his work so far.
2. Explain that sometimes it helps to hear what you write. Tell your child that her own ears will give her clues about what may need to be changed. Add that you are very interested in hearing her report or story. Suggest that she read it to you somewhat slowly and that if she notices anything while reading, she should mark the spot with a highlighter. She should not stop to fix it yet. She may find that words are missing, that sentences sound awkward, or that what she was trying to say is not what she ended up writing. This is also a good opportunity for her to decide if the report or story is organized logically so that her reader audience will be able to understand it easily.
3. Coach your child to make decisions about how to change each place he highlighted. You may use leading questions like "Does that sentence make sense to you yet? What needs to be changed? Did you mean to say this? Why did you highlight that? Is there a better way to say it? Do you need to add any information to help the reader understand your idea? Did you include any information that is unnecessary or distracting to the reader? Does each paragraph have a beginning topic sentence, a middle, and an end that also leads the reader to expect the next idea?" Give your child time to write in the corrections using a different colored pen or pencil. Make sure that he crosses out any parts of the original report or story that he is changing. If the corrections will not fit legibly in the space on the draft copy, write them on a new sheet of paper. Number them on the new page and put the same number again on the draft where the new words belong. When it is time to write the final copy, your child can incorporate the longer corrections by matching the numbers with the new words.
4. Tell your child to read the story out loud word-for-word, beginning with the last word and going backwards. Why? Because this will allow your child to find spelling, capitalization and punctuation errors. Make these corrections as they are discovered. It is sometimes helpful to circle words that are being corrected also.
5. Take a break. Then encourage your child to make the neat final copy to turn in. Make sure that he remembers to transfer all of the corrections he has decided to make. Give lavish praise for a job well done.

Tips & Warnings

• Young children are not going to produce flawless copy. Help your children to do their personal best and praise them for it.