Knowledge and Skills Statement
Have students revise an existing draft for sentence variety and then highlight in different colors the various sentence structures they used in their revised drafts.
A separate assessment might have students revise a draft for clarity, development, organization, style, and word choice. As students develop their revision skills, they will no longer need to look at one aspect of revision at a time and can look at a piece of writing to make all necessary revisions.
Further Explanation
This assessment requires students to know how to take a rough draft that needs improvement and make revisions so that the writing contains ideas that are logically connected and easy for the reader to understand. Students should be able to make suggestions for revising and improving the draft by deleting, combining, and rearranging words, sentences, and ideas. This skill should be developed with writing in all genres.
Research
Saddler, B., Saddler, K., Befoorhooz, B., & Cuccio-Slichko, J. (2014). A national survey of revising practices in the primary classroom. Learning Disabilities: A Contemporary Journal, 12(2), 129+. Retrieved from https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A395847923/PROF?u=tea&sid=PROF&xid=3fb82c16
Summary: This research survey of primary teachers indicates that more time needs to be given to revision of writing drafts in the classroom. Students primary make surface-level revisions that do not improve writing. In order to for students to become stronger writers, revision must be integrated into the writing process.