Exploros | Revising Your Work

Engage

Overview

In this experience, students learn the importance of the revision process. They identify and apply strategies to help improve clarity, development, organization, style, word choice, and sentence variety in their writing.

Objectives

Explain why revising is important to the writing process.
Identify and apply revision strategies to help improve the text.

Duration

One to two class periods.

You have learned about the steps of the writing process and how each step helps to create a well written and effective text. In this experience, you will learn and practice strategies you can apply during the revising step.

Objectives

Explain why revising is important to the writing process.
Identify and apply revision strategies to help improve the text.

Revisions to a draft of the Declaration of Independence

In 1776, the Second Continental Congress appointed a committee of five people to write a document that we know today as the Declaration of Independence. The committee collaborated on the ideas, and then Thomas Jefferson spent nearly three weeks writing multiple drafts. He tore up early drafts, but a small piece of one of them survived to show us that he revised large sections of what he wrote.

Reflect on what you know about the Declaration of Independence and explain why it was so important to Thomas Jefferson to make so many revisions in the text.

Post your answer

Students will likely note the importance of the document and Jefferson’s desire to ensure that the text was clear and polished. You can use this example to emphasize that even accomplished writers use the writing process, revising and editing their work many times.

You can share the following observations about the writing of the Declaration of Independence, written in 1822 in a letter from John Adams to Timothy Pickering:

I was delighted with its [the Declaration of Independence] high tone and the flights of oratory with which it abounded, especially that concerning Negro slavery, which, though I knew his Southern brethren would never suffer to pass in Congress, I certainly never would oppose. There were other expressions which I would not have inserted if I had drawn it up, particularly that which called the King tyrant. I thought this too personal, for I never believed George to be a tyrant in disposition and in nature; I always believed him to be deceived by his courtiers on both sides of the Atlantic, and in his official capacity, only, cruel. I thought the expression too passionate, and too much like scolding, for so grave and solemn a document; but as Franklin and Sherman were to inspect it afterwards, I thought it would not become me to strike it out. I consented to report it, and do not now remember that I made or suggested a single alteration.

When everyone is ready to continue, unlock the next scene.