The Art of Editing

English Language Arts Grade 8 The Writing Process

Students identify and apply rules for pronoun-antecedent agreement. Then they identify the difference between active and passive voice. Next they develop an editing checklist. Finally, they edit an excerpt.

This learning experience is designed for device-enabled classrooms. The teacher guides the lesson, and students use embedded resources, social media skills, and critical thinking skills to actively participate. To get access to a free version of the complete lesson, sign up for an exploros account.

The Pack contains associated resources for the learning experience, typically in the form of articles and videos. There is a teacher Pack (with only teacher information) and a student Pack (which contains only student information). As a teacher, you can toggle between both to see everything.

Here are the teacher pack items for The Art of Editing:

Engage

Overview

In this experience, students identify and apply rules for pronoun-antecedent agreement. Then they identify the difference between active and passive voice. Next they develop an editing checklist. Finally, they edit an excerpt.

Students will collaborate in small groups for Scene 4.

Note that additional rules are covered in the experiences Capitalization and Punctuation and Commonly Confused Words.

Objectives

Identify pronoun-antecedent agreement.
Identify and edit active and passive voice.
Develop and apply an editorial checklist.

Duration

One class period.

Writing is a process. After you have written and revised your text, the next step is to edit it to fix any errors. In this experience, you will learn what to look for during editing.

Objectives

Identify pronoun-antecedent agreement.
Identify and edit active and passive voice.
Develop and apply an editorial checklist.

owl with glasses standing on a red pencil, surrounded by copyedited words

Mistakes are…

Expected

Respected

Inspected

Corrected

The saying can apply to anything—like math homework, sports, and friendships.

Explain how the saying applies to the writing process.

Post your answer

Lead a class discussion about “mistakes” and the writing process: drafting is for putting ideas into words, even if there are errors in organization, structure, and language. The errors are expected and respected.

Revising is to fix the big mistakes. Editing is to fix the smaller errors. In these steps, the errors are inspected and corrected.

When everyone is ready to continue, unlock the next scene.

The Complete List of Learning Experiences in The Writing Process Unit.