Students struggle with revision because they do not know how to evaluate their own writing
as readers (Philippakos, 2017). When teaching students about the stages in Writers Workshop,
some of the most important, yet difficult to master, can be the editing and revising stages.
Students have difficulty because many times they are taught to focus on sentence by sentence
grammatical editing, instead of revision of the entire text, in regard to the organization of ideas.
What must be taught is revision for clarity of the writing, which can be done more effectively
among peers. Students can be taught to peer edit and revise effectively and respectfully via many
techniques, ranging from mini-lessons, modeling, conferences, checklists, rubrics, and so on. The
tools and resources provided for students are the pathway to their independence during the
editing stage of the writing process. The ultimate goal to peer collaboration is to encourage
students to self-reflect on their work and the work of their peers in order to improve because, an
effective reviser can improve the quality of the text they generate (Saddler, Saddler, & Cuccio-
Slichko, 130).
According to Jasmine and Weiner (2007), one of the many benefits to peer editing is that
students are also acquiring the skill of writing for an authentic audience because they know
others will also be reading their writing. If students feel as if they are writing only for the
teacher, they are less inclined to write with passion and personal interest. When students
exchange work to be analyzed, they are able to take the role as the author and the audience,
which gives them the opportunity to evaluate the needs of the audience and what is needed to
clarify the thoughts presented in the writing. Peer editing can help students understand how to
write for a reader, which in turn helps those students understand that if their compositions are not
readable, they have written in vain because their ideas will not be comprehensible. As students
reread their compositions, they should be asking themselves if what they are writing fits their
A common belief among primary school teachers is that their students are not
developmentally able to revise each others, or their own writing. According to Jasmine and
Weiner (2007), Mini-lessons are a great way to improve students editing abilities. Modeling the
stages during the writing process in small portions can be effective for students to retain the
information. For example, focusing on one needed improvement area such as capitalization or
punctuation editing during a mini-lesson, can improve students abilities to edit their peers
capitalization or punctuation errors in their writing. Referring to Augers (2014) study of buddy
editing in a first-grade classroom, the teacher continually modeled the actions and comments that
should take place during buddy editing, further supporting the idea that instructing students to be
effective revisers should be a process that is modeled and scaffolded, such as with any new
foreign concept. Practice to understand what is expected and looked for during this stage in the
writing process can enhance the experience, which is why mini-lessons are essential in the
students success during the revising and editing stage because many students are unfamiliar
with these processes. According to Tompkins (2008), for students to understand the process of
revising and editing, it is the teachers job to introduce the topic, share examples, provide
For students to know what is expected of them and their peers during the revising and
editing stages, the use of checklists and rubrics can be detrimental in guiding students through
the process because they have a point of reference when giving suggestions. Checklists can be
used as a way of allowing students to evaluate themselves and their peers. They facilitate the
process because they have explicit guidelines and expectations that are clear to the students when
assessing writing during the editing stage. Research by Philippakos (2017) argues that the use of
rubrics that contain every aspect of what is expected within a piece of writing, whether it be a
beginning, middle, and end to a narrative story, or a descriptive setting and characters, provides a
point of reference for the students when reviewing writing. Rubrics should be developed that
will allow readers to assign scores on those evaluation criteria and make comments
(Philippakos, 2017). The rubrics can be used to assess and then compare different levels of work
with different needs, so students are able to evaluate what can be changed to clarify the meaning.
The Writing Workshop approach contributed many factors to creating a positive writing
atmosphere. These included opportunities for students to choose what they wished to write, to
work with peers, and to experience individual time with the teacher (Jasmine & Weiner, 2007).
According to Jasmine and Weiners (2007) study, conferences should be held between teacher
and students, as well as between the students editing each others work, so that they are able to
discuss and give deeper meaning to ideas they could develop more in their writing. It is crucial to
understand the outcome of writing interactions students will have during the writing process,
because peer editing can be affected based on how students perceive each other and their ability
towards like-minded and similar people to themselves based on factors such as race, ethnicity,
age, gender, socioeconomic status, and perceived intelligence, according to Christianakis (2010),
it is important to create peer interactions with a heterogeneous mix of students to balance the
ideas and creativity among the entire classroom. All students have a unique perspective to share
when commenting, whether it be regarding the illustrations, the content, the main idea, or any
after years of attempting to implement it in a multilingual environment. She focuses on the idea
that for many students, English is the second language being learned, so the students are still
unfamiliar with spelling patterns, punctuation rules, and grammatical structures in English. I
have also tried selecting a limited scope of errors to address based on an analysis of my students'
writing. I would flag problems in a text that I hoped children would be able to then resolve in
order to produce a cleaner copy as a final draft for publication (Auger, 2014). From this quote,
it is important to understand that overwhelming the students with errors to correct can have more
of a negative effect on the editing process. Instead, students should focus on gradually improving
repeated errors, few at a time. In agreement, Paz and Sherman (2013) note that breaking up the
revising process into multiple steps that are focused on individually, instead of all at once, tends
to produce a more polished result. Writers usually make four kinds of changes as they revise,
which includes adding, substituting, deleting, and moving text from one place to another in order
to produce the most clarity. Only one type of revision should be focused on at a time. As a
starting goal, students can aim for making at least three productive changes to another persons
draft.
According to Tompkins (2008), some of the activities that should take place during the
revising and editing stage are rereading the rough draft, sharing it in a writing group, and
revising based on feedback received from the writing group. When in writing groups, students
should offer the author choices; give the author responses, feelings, and thoughts; show different
possibilities in revising; and speed up revising. The six steps in peer editing groups are: the
writer reads, listeners offer compliments, writer asks questions, listeners offer suggestions, repeat
the process for all students in the group, and then writers plan for revision. Encourage students to
focus on aspects of writing such as leads, descriptive words, details, dialogue, excitement,
organization, setting, sequence, characters, voice, point of view, repeated words, and
punctuation. Highlight peer editing stances the students can take, such as critical, empathetic,
inquisitive, directive, and many others. The idea behind these is to provide students with a
Students can be assigned writing workshop groups or choose them independently. Either
way, they are to listen to each others writing and provide responsive feedback based on their
ability to understand and relate to it. It is essential to provide students with the ability to properly
comment on their peers writing, whether it be through sentence starters or modeled constructive
questions and comments. For example, in one study done in a first-grade classroom, each day at
the end of the writing hour, two children read their work aloud to the class, show the
accompanying illustrations, and ask their peers for questions or comments. This sharing time is a
primary way for my students to learn to talk about writing and to respect their classmates'
original texts (Auger, 2014). Encourage students to use phrases that are polite and will not hurt
anyones feelings. The teacher can provide sentence stems such as: I like; I got confused when;
tell me more about; your writing reminds me of; my favorite part is; or could you try to.
Although there are many potential reasons that writers, particularly less
skilled writers, struggle with the intricacies of revision, research indicates young writers
can create effective and meaningful changes when provided with supports including time to
(Van Gelderen, 1997) (Saddler, Saddler, & Cuccio-Slichko, 130). The intended outcome of
teaching students to effectively peer edit was to produce independent writers that are eventually
able to self-assess their own work. Such instruction is important for students (a) to value the
process and clarify how it differs from editing, (b) to learn procedures that can guide their
reviewing effort, and (c) most important, to learn how to evaluate writing in general and their