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Contributor: Delaine Thomas. Lesson ID: 12091
Rarely do diamonds sparkle without a bit of polishing. So it is with writing: initial sentences need revision to make them sparkle in the reader's mind. Learn the five steps for revising your work!
Have you ever wished that you could go back and do something over again, something that you felt would have been better if you had done it differently? Well, when it comes to writing, you can!
Revision is the third step in the writing process.
If you missed or would like to review the previous Related Lessons in our The Writing Process series, find them in the right-hand sidebar.
Revision is the most important step in writing. An author revises to make sure that the content of his or her writing is legible, clear, and impactful. As you watch this video, Teaching Kids About Revising (Writing Workshop Lesson) by Steve Reifman, where two students go through the revision process, write the definition of revision on a piece of paper:
As you saw in the video, the revision step can take some time to complete. It is good to read your writing out loud. This enables you to hear mistakes that you might overlook when reading silently. Then read it silently. Ask your teacher or family member to read your work as well. Ask yourself these questions:
Improve your writing by adding, subtracting, moving, or rewriting parts.
Read the following paragraph:
It is spring. The grass is growing. Flowers are growing. Their colors are so pretty. There are baby birds in the tree. Leaves are growing. I love spring!
This is a short paragraph about spring. What are some things that you notice in the above paragraph that need to be revised? Share with your teacher or parent your thoughts on what should be revised.
Did you notice as you read that most of the sentences are really short? Did you also notice the repetition of the word, "growing"? Let’s try to make this sound better. I will demonstrate this by making my changes in green between the lines of writing.
It is spring. The grass<, flowers, and leaves are growing.>is growing. Flowers are growing. Their colors are so pretty. There are baby birds in the tree. Leaves are growing. I love spring!
Now our paragraph reads:
It is spring. The grass, flowers, and leaves are growing. Their colors are so pretty. There are baby birds in the tree. I love spring!
Does that sound better? By changing all the short sentences about things that are growing into one sentence, it makes the paragraph sound less choppy. What else can we change? Now we have the sentence, “Their colors are so pretty.” Since we changed the sentence before that to combine all the things that are growing, it is now unclear as to what colors are so pretty.
Instead of saying, “Their colors are so pretty,” we could say, “I love the bright colors that I see everywhere.” So now our paragraph says:
It is spring. The grass, flowers, and leaves are growing. I love the bright colors that I see everywhere. There are baby birds in the tree. I love spring!
The paragraph sounds a lot better now. What about the first sentence? Can we make it more descriptive? What about, "After a long, cold winter, it is finally spring!" Let’s put it all together and see how it sounds:
After a long, cold winter, it is finally spring! The grass, flowers, and leaves are growing. I love the bright colors that I see everywhere. There are baby birds in the tree. I love spring!
How do you think it sounds now?
There are many different ways we could have changed the original paragraph to make it sound better. We could have even added more information to talk about spring a little more. The important thing is that you go through your work sentence-by-sentence to see if you can make each one better.
What are some changes that you would have made in the paragraph? Share them with your teacher or parent.
Now, move on to the Got It? section and do some more practice.
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