Editing Checklist

Editing is one of the more challenging writing skills. If we're looking at Moffet's hierarchy of student thinking, this is asking students to reach their highest and most abstract level of knowledge - grammar - and apply it to their own or a peer's writing. This is an incredibly difficult task! If your students are like mine, this is complicated by the fact that they're not knowledgeable of the rules of grammar or of formal writing.

Last year, I wrote and started implementing my own editing checklist. As students follow the directions, it walks them through editing their own papers. They can also use the checklist on a peer's paper to provide them with editing suggestions.

A small portion of the editing checklist

You can access the file from my dropbox.

To scaffold this, I start the year by creating in-class stations. I set up a commonly confused word station, a paragraph station, an MLA station, and more. I might add stations based on our specific focuses for that paper (thesis, formal language, organization, etc.).

As the year progresses, I move to having students do this on their own, but still requiring them to turn in their completed checklist with their essay.

I have gotten rave reviews from students about this editing checklist, including having a handful of graduates tell me they still use it in college. I also see how much this process improves the mechanics from the first to the second draft, and having students do those corrections themselves gives me much more time to focus on content corrections. I have yet to figure out a great way to get students to critique this themselves or for their peers. Suggestions? Add them in the comments below.