Activity Summary:
This activity teaches revision as a process and how to provide peer-feedback on a draft. I use a clever attention grabber and begin to ask students to change, add, or delete different parts of their essays.
Instructions:
“This activity works best in the classroom. If you are trying to teach students how to revise, I recommend this activity as a creative and fun method for teaching the different actions of revision. Sometimes revision can seem like a difficult practice, and this activity allows students to play with their writing.”
- Before beginning the activity, students should bring a rough draft of their essays.
- Ask the students to take out their papers and get ready to revise
- Then ask a student to come to the front of the class and roll the dice. These are two small wooden blocks with different messages. On one I have “change,” “add,” “delete” and on the other “word,” “sentence,” and “paragraph” on the other. Of course, you can also do this activity by drawing these messages from two hat.
- Sometimes you will get a student who does not want to do what the dice suggest, like delete a paragraph. If the dice roll add a paragraph that student will quickly add back the paragraph they were forced to delete. I encourage them to delete the paragraph for the activity and explain they can always put the paragraph back when we are done.
- Tell the students that the goal of this activity is to show them a process of re-writing; writing is a process that requires playing with the text until it feels appropriate for the task at hand.