The early grades are the perfect opportunity to teach good editing skills. For many writers, it is hard to go back and find mistakes. Help students to look for specific errors when editing. They can't focus on every error all at once. It could be spelling, grammar, punctuation, or another area for which you want them to edit. You have to tell them after having modeled several examples from student writing.

Here is an example. A student in fourth grade may be ready to learn how to edit for wordiness.

Consider this short writing sample:

Leslie was going to tell her mom that she got in trouble. The principal said that she was going to lose a week of recess because she stole something from the cafeteria.

This student shows some advanced sentence structure. You could point out that the sentences are excellent and could be improved by eliminating the use of the word "that. "

Lately I have been burning the midnight oil trying to get all my creative stuff out and get ready for a new school year. Call it a feeling of blissful exhaustion, if you will, but this is the passion you want to sustain through a long year.

Writing tip of the day:

Tonight I was writing some corporate stuff and I went back to paper and pencil. When the stakes are high, it is important for students to know how to draft. So you have to teach drafting starting in kindergarten. That is why I will again have a writing block in my primary schedule this year. We will have daily drafting time because all writing can be better with some fine tuning.

I have been super busy with back to school. It is going to be a busy year as I am adding third graders to my K-1-2 multi-age classroom. This year, we are using a Captain America theme, and I am still working out all of the details. 

I hope you will enjoy the fact that tonight I am making my Primary Community  Helpers Vets and Pets Unit available for free. It's an easy to implement unit you could try in the first weeks of school while you are still wrapping your head around the new school year. It's perfect when you're short of cash.


Happy first week of school!