Becoming Editors
Becoming Editors
At Smitham, in English, one of our aims is to teach the children to become better ‘editors’ of their own writing. Effectively, editing a piece of work can often be a difficult skill to master. Being able to identify where you have made mistakes and know how to improve something you have already finished can be difficult. However editing a piece of writing is something that all adults do, sometimes on a daily basis depending on where they work. For this reason we believe that the children at Smitham should learn to become independent editors of their own work by the time they leave Smitham. The editing process involves children drawing upon everything they have learnt up to that given point. This can often be overwhelming for children and therefore time to reflect and prompts from teachers can often be needed. In order for children to become independent, effective editors direct teaching of this skill is needed. For this reason, at Smitham children will be taught how to edit through short editing lessons and editing station lessons. The skills that the children learn in these lessons will help them to complete the editing of their own writing. The aim of editing is to encourage the children to always think of ways to improve their writing to have the most impact on the intended audience.
How we will do this in school:
- Adults will model how to edit their own writing
- Adults will model how to edit other author’s writing
- Children will be given green 'editing' pens
- Editing will be the focus during some writing sessions
- Children will be given time to edit their writing either independently or with a partner
- Dictionaries, thesauruses and word mats/banks will be used to support
- Teachers will use conferencing to have further discussions with children regarding their vocabulary choices; writing structure; who the audience is and the purpose of the writing
