Skills Unit 2 Teacher Guide - EngageNY

Writing
Worksheet 8.1
Editing a Draft as a Class
Note to Teacher
Review
35 minutes
In today’s lesson you will demonstrate editing a draft. This will allow you to
model some basic editing conventions like crossing out draft text, inserting
words with a carat, etc.
• Remind students in the previous lessons, they first planned and then drafted a
retelling of “The Milk.” They planned the elements of the story on a worksheet
and then wrote the draft in paragraph form on a separate sheet of paper.
• Pointing to the writing process chart, tell students today they will work on the
third step in writing—editing. Explain that editing is what we do when we take
a draft and try to make it better. Even professional writers do not write perfect
stories on the first try. They edit and rework their writing to make it better.
• Tell students you have a draft for them to edit as a class. Let students know this
is not the draft you worked on as a class but rather one that appeared like magic
overnight in the classroom. Show students the picture of Mr. Mowse (mouse)
at the end of this lesson. Encourage students to read Mr. Mowse’s name. Ask
students if they know how to write mouse. Explain that both ‘ou’ and ‘ow’ can be
used to spell /ou/. Mr. Mowse apparently spells his name with an ‘ow’. The draft
is from Mr. Mowse. Mr. Mowse likes to “listen in” to class writing lessons and try
to write the same things the second graders are learning to write. But Mr. Mowse
is very shy. He waits until everyone goes home to leave what he has written for
students to find the next day. Mr. Mowse likes to write but he needs some help
with editing. Mr. Mowse will appear from time to time in other lessons.
Editing Mr. Mowse’s Draft
• Display the draft from Mr. Mowse.
• Point and read the display copy of the editing checklist (Worksheet 8.1). Point
out the Tricky Words: questions, title, character, middle, final.
• Explain this is an editing checklist that has some questions addressed to the
author. The questions are suggestions the author might want to consider to
make his or her writing better.
• Read the first question of the checklist.
• Ask the class if the draft has a title. If so, make a check mark next to the
question on your editing checklist.
Unit 2 | Lesson 8 79
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