Revision Strategies for Adolescent Writers: Moving Students in the Write Direction

by Jolene A. Borgese, Richard E. Heyler, Stephanie A. Romano

Overview

Enlarge your repertoire of revision strategies!

For many secondary students, writing effectively is the most elusive of the critical literacy skills needed for college and career readiness. And for many teachers, revision is the most difficult part of the writing process to tackle. How can adolescent writers be guided to revisit their work, to identify the weaknesses in their writing drafts, and revise—making their pieces stronger and more effective? The Common Core State Standards advocate strengthening students′ writing through revision—a skill different from either drafting or editing—and using technology for creating and collaborating with others. This instructional guide, with its more than 30 flexible, classroom-tested strategies, demonstrates these practices and more:

• Frontloading (planning, rehearsing, and conversing before writing)
• Peer conferencing as part of a writers′ workshop
• Using technology to write, collaborate, and revise in and out of the classroom
• Modeling effective revision techniques as writers and teachers of writing

Teachers will turn again and again to this easy-to-use resource, with its clear explanations of strategies correlated to the 6 Traits of Effective Writing, examples of "before-and-after" student work, and thoughtful quotes from published writers about their own writing and revision processes. These authors and experienced teachers of writing have provided a handbook that can be used immediately to scaffold students′ revision and help them become more fluent, confident, and independent writers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781452296456
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	11/08/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	152
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Jolene’s experiences came from the fact that she was a “young, naïve teacher with little writing instruction and experience.” The remedy: she became involved in the first writing project in Pennsylvania in the summer of 1980 when she attended the six-week summer writing institute. For the next 15 years she was the co-director of the project with Dr. Robert Weiss at West Chester University. Jolene taught Writing Strategies Courses, designed the “Summer Youth Writing Project” and went off site to lead Summer Institutes in different parts of the state. This life-changing event shaped her teaching, her career and most importantly her students’ learning. She taught middle and high school for 21 years in suburban Philadelphia and earned her doctorate at Widener University where she researched what made students successful on local, state, and national writing assessments. She left the classroom to work with teachers as a staff developer, a national six traits trainer for a large educational publishing company. With a volunteer group, she traveled to Guatemala to help struggling schools. There she presented writing as a process, the six traits, and frontloading strategies to Guatemalan teachers. All were eager and excited to learn about writing and methods to help their students be better writers. Jolene found that it didn’t matter that most of the teachers were Spanish speaking and needed an interpreter to understand her; what they heard were motivating ideas, explicit instruction and the power of literacy that they could pass on to their students. Presently, Jolene has added to her repertoire literacy professor at local universities. She is active in many professional literacy organizations and is program co-chair for the Keystone State Reading Association annual conference in October, 2011.
Dick’s interest in writing and visualizing goes back to his college days at Penn State University when he was a writing major with a minor in photography. After graduation, he traveled the country in a Kerouac-mode working as a photographer. From Maine to Colorado to Florida and every state in between, he met the people of the country and heard their stories. Returning from “the road” he began teaching English in the Athens Area School District in Athens, Pennsylvania. As his teaching shifted toward engaging his students in writing, he became more and more interested in the writing process, how the various elements interacted with each other, and how the same writing could grow. Twenty-six years since he began teaching, he is still a writing teacher for the Athens Area School District and co-director of the Endless Mountains Writing Project at Mansfield University. Dick believes writing is a solid way to tell our stories and by our stories we understand our lives. He imparts this daily to his students. This book is an invitation to learn and a journey for all teachers who teach writing.
Stephanie taught first and second grade where creative writing was a part of the language arts curriculum. She encouraged her students to be storytellers and write their stories down; not just Stephanie, but also her students and school community heard and saw the power of their stories through their authorship. Years later, Stephanie was offered a position as a reading specialist in a public school in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Her administration asked her to gain knowledge in the writing process so she could meld the reading-writing connection for her at-risk students. She participated in the Pennsylvania Writing Project at West Chester University where Jolene co-directed the project. Through her writing experiences, she realized the reciprocal relationship that writing is important to reading and reading is important to writing. As she worked with her at-risk readers and writers for over 20 years, she implemented the tools that her students needed to become more literate. Stephanie was appointed to a statewide steering committee commissioned by the governor to develop the Oral History Project, an authentic learning experience integrating the academic standards of reading, writing, speaking and listening. At the Governor’s Institutes in Pennsylvania, this project was attended by hundreds of teachers with the understanding that they would implement it in their classrooms. This project culminated in 2006 with the publishing of the book which Stephanie co-authored with colleagues Diane Skiffington Dickson, Dick Heyler, and Linda Reilly entitled The Oral History Project: Connecting Students to Their Community, Grades 4 – 8. She is the past president of the Keystone State Reading Association and is presently the editor of their newsletter, The Keystone Reader. Stephanie earned her doctorate of Education in Reading at Lehigh University and has recently retired from the Department of Reading Education at East Stroudsburg University, Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Foreword
About the Authors
Introduction: The Need for Revision Strategies
Revision Throughout the Writing Process
Part I. Think from the Start: Begin with Frontloading Activities
1. Code the Text
2. Cut, Slash, and Burn
3. Create a Character Sketch
4. Create an Argument
5. Write an Effective Speech
Part II. Focus on Ideas
6. Use Anecdotes
7. Expand the Memory, Expand the Text
8. Guided Revising
9. Search for Details: The Hunt
10. Read and Rewrite
11. Add Specifics
Part III. Focus on Organization
12. A B C Revision
13. Organize a Feature Article
14. Try a Different Genre
15. Snip ′n′ Clip
16. Tally Up
Part IV. Focus on Voice, Word Choice, and Sentence Fluency
17. Create Authentic Voice
18. Write Less, Write More
19. Wordle
20. Sentence Fluency
21. Verbs! Get Some
Part V. Two Heads Are Better Than One: Peer Conference
22. SMART
23. Draw as a Way to Think and Revise
24. Marathon Writing
25. Pointing
Part VI. The Reading-Writing Connection: Consult Quality Literature
26. Once Upon a Time
27. And They Lived Happily Ever After
28. What Did You Say?
29. Paint a Picture with Words
30. Personification in Poetry
31. Write from Another Point of View
Part VII. Digital Communication by Nanci Werner-Burke
32. Vocabulary Exploration
33. Talk Before You Leap
34. All Together Now!
35. Give Me the Highlights
36. Picture This
List of Literature Cited
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Revision Strategies offers strategies and lesson ideas for helping students re-think and re-envision their drafts and in so doing produce outstanding work. The authors make the hard work of writing well something all students can accomplish. You need this book! "

Carol Jago

“Finally there are some practical ideas for teaching revision that don’t involve gallons of red ink and loaded weapons! I found whole new lessons on every page.”

Earl Squyres

"From the groundbreaking work of Janet Emig to recent studies of revision in digital composing, researchers of writing processes find that when students understand and practice a rich sense of revision, their writing improves dramatically. Revision Strategies for Adolescent Writers offers a wide-ranging collection of instructional strategies teachers can use to help with this key element to improving student writing."

Tom Fox

“This is a practical text for any teacher of writing in Grades K-12, but a rarity in its usefulness of 6-12 applications for revision instruction. I’ve been teaching English 9-12 for 28 years and found this book to be immediately usable in my classroom.”

Sandra Moore

“The greatest struggle of English teachers is finding ways to incorporate meaningful writing assignments into the curriculum, giving effective feedback, and helping students make changes in their writing beyond editing for grammar. The sound theories in this book give teachers strategies to help their students move from editing to true revision.”

Kristina Turner

"Revisions Strategies for Adolescent Writers: Moving in the WRITE Direction is an innovative and engaging writing resource! Its ready-to-use handbook structure is just what teachers need to take a fresh look at the teaching of writing. It will be welcomed by every educator who values writing as a lifelong skill. "

Maureen Mc Laughlin

"This is an important reference for language arts teachers. The strategies give students concrete ways of revising, and for kids who have a hard time verbalizing or explaining their ideas, this book provides techniques for them to expand and describe what they're talking about. "

Sarah Lucci

"Revisions Strategies for Adolescent Writers: Moving in the WRITE Direction is an innovative and engaging writing resource! Its ready-to-use handbook structure is just what teachers need to take a fresh look at the teaching of writing. It will be welcomed by every educator who values writing as a lifelong skill."

Maureen McLaughlin