English Language Arts and Reading.6.10.C

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The student is expected to

revise drafts for clarity, development, organization, style, word choice, and sentence variety;

writing process TEKS talk image

Knowledge and Skills Statement

Composition: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts--writing process. The student uses the writing process recursively to compose multiple texts that are legible and uses appropriate conventions.

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.

how the information within a written text is organized
Students should review their drafts and identify places where the ideas are expressed in an unclear or illogical way. Students should make necessary changes by adding information to clarify meaning, deleting extraneous information that obscures meaning, combining ideas to avoid redundancies, and rearranging the ideas to ensure logical progression.
the practice of varying the length and structure of sentences to avoid monotony, to provide appropriate emphasis and inflection, and to enhance the rhythm and flow of the written or oral text
the unique/distinct way a writer uses language; diction, syntax, sentence fluency, figurative language, and voice all contribute to a writer’s style (e.g., one poet’s writing style may be terse, blunt, and conversational while another poet’s writing style may be soft and informal)
the writer or speaker’s choice of words that is derived from their style, purpose, and need to communicate accurately, appropriately, and understandably to a specific audience; also known as diction

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.