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Revision is the third step of the writing process. It happens after students have prewritten and completed at least one draft. Writing isn’t a linear process, and parts like drafting and revising can be cyclical.
Today, we’re discussing what revising in writing is, how it’s closely related to drafting, and tips you can give your students to make the revision process easier.
Revision is a creative, generative, reflective process where you look at your entire piece of writing and determine if it meets your goals and reader expectations. Revising happens when you look at your writing from a fresh, critical perspective to make big-picture changes.
Think of revision like remodeling a house. The structure already exists, but maybe you’re tearing out walls or putting on an addition. In writing, you add and remove big ideas and information to best serve the finished product.
The most common things you’ll look for during revisions include:
Effectiveness of the thesis statement.
Effectiveness of the argument.
Focus of the piece.
Organizational structure.
Effectiveness of supporting evidence.
Consistency in voice.
Revision may include more than just swapping or rearranging words on the page. Evaluating any images, adjusting the visual layout, or changing the font sizing and style are other elements for students to consider while revising. All revisions, both words and visuals, are meant to help them get to that polished final copy.
[Why is revision necessary in writing?](id-why)
Revision is what turns good writing into excellent writing. It helps students discover what they didn’t know was missing when writing their drafts. Revision also allows students to think critically about what they’re saying and how to make it clearer or more targeted. Here are just a few benefits of revision:
Improving structure and flow: Revising allows students to clarify their ideas by removing unnecessary paragraphs, sections, or ideas. It lets them look for ways to make smoother transitions and create the most logical flow.
Maintaining focus: Revision helps students ensure their writing stays focused on its purpose. It allows them to ensure their writing resonates with and is accessible to their audience.
Boosting credibility: Revising boosts students’ credibility as writers and on their topics because it shows they’re diligent about making their writing more accurate, logical, and easy to follow. It allows them to check their sources and polish the piece so it reflects that they know what they’re talking about.
[How are revision and feedback related?](id-how)
While not listed as an official “step” in the writing process, feedback is extremely important for drafting and revision. It’s part of the cyclical process of the middle stages of the writing process.
Feedback offers writers a reader’s perspective, highlighting what’s clear, what’s missing, and what’s enjoyabley. It helps writers see their work from someone else’s perspective. Writers can then use that feedback to reflect on what they wrote and change their work to address their audience’s needs.
After a revision, writers will typically seek additional feedback to determine if their changes worked or if they still need to make adjustments. This process typically continues until those giving feedback have no more notes.
What feedback strategies can I use to motivate students to revise their writing?
Question-based feedback helps students think critically about their writing choices. A comment like, “After this paragraph, what does the reader need to know next?” can help students reread their work and think for themselves. This helps build the revision muscle rather than just telling them what to change or update.
It’s also helpful to remind students that receiving (and giving) feedback is a dialogue. It’s not about the giver handing down commands to the writer. It’s about discussing and exploring the piece's ideas and purposes to ensure the writing achieves its goal.
Open-ended and question-based feedback can make your suggestions sound less like demands and make it easier for students to make revisions that fit their tone, voice, and intent.
Should students do peer revision to help with self revision?
Peer revision can be a great tool for writing, but students need guidance on thoughtfully and respectfully reviewing each other’s work. If you’d like your students to participate in peer editing sessions, keep these tips in mind:
Model how to give feedback
Modeling how to give feedback can help students understand how to look at each other’s work. Use examples, like anonymous sample drafts with comments. Stress the importance of being both thoughtful and constructive. Giving feedback doesn’t mean tearing someone else’s work apart but showing them what areas are confusing (or exciting!) for a reader.
Provide a revision checklist
Give students a structured way to analyze each other’s writing. This checklist or rubric can give them ideas of things to look for while reading. Try our peer feedback form to get them started.
Assign pairs or a revision schedule
When you assign partners or groups for revision, you control who works with whom. This can help avoid mismatched skill levels or potential social pressures students may feel over sharing their work. Rotating partners and groups can also help students get diverse perspectives on their writing, rather than always working with their friends.
Encourage feedback reviews
Ask students to reflect on giving and receiving feedback and the process of peer reviews. You may ask questions like “What was helpful about your partner’s feedback?” or “What’s one change you plan to make to your next draft after the peer review? Reflection can help them learn how to become better peer reviewers.
How can I help my students address conflicting feedback?
The way a piece of writing resonates with readers can vary. Even for clear, concise works, writing—like any other art form—is open to interpretation. Because of that, students may sometimes encounter conflicting feedback from peers and teachers on their drafts.
Conflicting feedback usually concerns big-picture things like clarity, flow, tone, or evidence. Students are less likely to encounter differing opinions when the focus is on grammar and mechanics that have clear rules.
Good advice for students who receive conflicting feedback is to look for similarities within the conflict. This encourages them to analyze the feedback and see where both comments might align. Do both pieces of feedback comment on the order of paragraphs but conflict about what the updated order should be? If so, students can determine that the order needs to be changed and revise the piece both ways to see which one sounds best to them.
[9 tips and strategies for revision](id-tips)
Share and use these tips and strategies with students to help them become more confident in their revising skills:
1. Use the ARRR method
The ARRR method stands for adding, rearranging, removing, and replacing. It highlights four areas that can help students determine the key places of focus for a revision cycle. Here are some questions students can ask for each area to help them self-evaluate their drafts:
Adding: What else does the reader need to know that isn’t shared?
Rearranging: Would moving sections or paragraphs around create a more logical flow of ideas?
Removing: What words, sections, or ideas can be removed that don’t support the primary purpose of the piece?
Replacing: Can I rewrite any sentence, paragraph, or section to make it more straightforward, direct, or useful?
2. Take a break
Encourage students to step away from their writing before diving into revisions. When they get some distance from drafting and allow others to provide feedback, they can review their pieces more clearly. Getting that space can help students read what they wrote from an outsider’s perspective.
What counts as a long enough break may be different for everyone. Some people may need an hour, others a day or a week. Doing another activity like taking a walk or listening to music helps clear your mind of the writing so you can be refreshed more quickly.
3. Model revision strategies
You can model how to revise writing for your students, so they can see what the process looks like instead of just thinking about it in the abstract. You can model in small groups, one-on-one conferences, or by projecting an anonymous draft to the class and discussing how you would make revisions.
Newsela ELA also has resources to help you model revision strategies. Try our “Revising for an Audience” text set to get resources and a lesson guide to help you implement it in your classroom. Not a Newsela customer yet? Sign up for Newsela Lite to start your free 45-day trial!
4. Start with big ideas first
Teach students to dive into one big revision idea first. Start by reviewing the thesis, the purpose, or the audience, but don’t try to review and revise for all three at once. It’s also important not to get caught up in the details, like spelling and grammar, when revising for these big ideas.
Doing revisions this way will take several reads. Students will read the piece through with one specific purpose and make notes for adjustment. Then they’ll reread it with the next big purpose as the focus. They’ll repeat this process until they’ve addressed all the major big ideas that need revising.
5. Try a reverse outline
Unlike outlining in prewriting, when students are trying to figure out what they want to say, a reverse outline makes them analyze what they actually wrote. Students can summarize each section of their piece or the individual paragraphs. This method helps students check the flow of a piece, improve clarity, spot repetition, and align sections with the thesis statement.
6. Hold in-class revision workshops
Revision is a key step in the writing process. It’s not something students should pass over or ignore. Build revision time into the classroom when you’re giving writing assignments. Revision workshops not only acknowledge this as an essential part of the writing process but also provide dedicated time for students to work it into their writing plans.
When you have students do revisions in class, this also allows you to model, answer questions, and help them build this skill through guidance.
7. Read the draft out loud
Especially when a writer knows what something is supposed to say, it may be easy for them to miss where something doesn’t flow or make sense. Reading your writing aloud can call attention to something that doesn’t sound right or make sense in its current context. Reading aloud is also helpful for catching missing words or run-on sentences, which students correct during editing.
8. Use a printed copy
Areas that need revising may be easier to spot on paper than on the screen. Try having students print a copy of their draft and review it. Have them use a fun colored pen, highlighter, or sticky notes to mock up the changes they want to make. They can leave notes in the margins, draw arrows, and cross out words or whole paragraphs.
Another benefit of working from a printed copy is that students can try removing or switching things around without messing with the original copy. After they’ve made their changes, they can go back to the digital copy and update it.
9. Use digital track changes
If students can’t or don’t want to print many draft copies for revision, they can also use track changes in their digital word processing tools. Track changes mode allows students to mark up their draft without losing or deleting the original copy. Then, once they’re satisfied, they can accept their own changes. Commenting also works if students prefer to use that rather than track changes.
[What comes after revising in the writing process?](id-next)
Revising is an iterative process. What comes directly after revising may be more drafting and more revision. Once students are satisfied that they’ve revised enough, then comes editing, proofreading, and publication. For students, publication may look like submitting their assignment to you, or it could look more like traditional publishing, such as submitting an article to the school paper.
[Revision FAQs](id-faq)
Do you or your students have questions about the revising phase of the writing process? We have answers!
What’s different about revising, editing, and proofreading?
Revising, editing, and proofreading are often used interchangeably to describe the third phase of the writing process. But they serve distinct purposes. Help students determine which action they need to complete with the following definitions:
Revision: The first step of making big-picture changes. It focuses on flow, content, and organization.
Editing: The second step, which follows revision, makes sentence-level changes. It focuses on consistency, style, readability, word choice, and mechanics.
Proofreading: The final review happens before students submit or publish their work. It focuses on micro errors like typos, spelling, punctuation, and consistency.
How can I encourage students to revise their writing?
Because drafting and revising together are a repetitive process, students may get bored or want to quit as the number of revisions increases. Solidifying a classroom culture of innovation and iteration from the beginning of the school year or semester can help students stay engaged in the revision process. If reworking, redoing, and rethinking are parts of their everyday learning, these things can feel less jarring when they start to write.
Another problem may be that students get fatigued when rewrites feel extensive. In some cases, their revisions will be so extensive that the thesis needs to be rewritten or large sections must be overhauled. Remind students that this is normal. Encourage them to return to drafting or even prewriting using what they know about their most recent draft to create a new outline or plan for the next draft.
Other barriers beyond boredom or finding motivation may be the emotional discomfort from revision.
Talk with students about these emotional aspects of writing. Remind them that things they cut from a current draft don’t have to disappear forever. Recommend creating a “For Later” or “Graveyard” document on their devices where they can save ideas, sentences, or even whole paragraphs of writing that aren’t right for their current piece, but could appear in future writing.
It also helps to remind students that revision is a skill and a muscle they have to build. Even the best writers may feel uncomfortable receiving feedback and making revisions. Yet, the more you do it, the less hurtful or stressful it may feel. This skill is built through practice and exposure, which allows you to work through those hard feelings.
How will students know when to stop revising their draft?
Drafting and revising can lead to a perfectionist mindset. Students may constantly want to revise and edit, hoping that what they write becomes “perfect.” The truth is that no artistic work, including writing, is ever complete or perfect. There’s always more that can be done. Students need to learn when to decide that what they’ve written is complete enough to serve its intended purpose.
You can guide them through this process by sharing a checklist of questions to ask when they’re rereading their own work. These questions can help them find places where they need to remove information or expand on it. When they’re satisfied that they’ve covered all these points, they’ll know it’s time to stop revising the draft. Try sharing these questions with students, and add your own for even more targeted revisions:
Is the thesis statement clearly explained within the first paragraph?
Is the purpose of this piece clear?
Do my ideas flow logically through the entire piece?
Do my topic sentences clearly connect to the thesis statement?
Is there unnecessary repetition of words or ideas throughout the piece?
Nurture confident writers with Newsela Writing
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