Planning, Revising, Editing, Rewriting

1. Hand out Draft A: "Bats are very useful animals. One reason is that they eat a lot of bugs. They eat very many bugs every night. Another reason is that some bats help plants. They carry pollen from flower to flower. That is very helpful. In conclusion, bats are very useful."
2. And Draft B, a report meant to explain how volcanoes form: "First I got a book about volcanoes from the library. Then I read that the inside of the Earth is very hot. Then I read about plates. I learned that when plates move apart, melted rock called magma can come up. Then I looked at pictures of a volcano erupting. It was cool. That is how I learned about volcanoes."
3. Pairs judge each draft: "Fix it sentence by sentence, or start again?" One minute each, with a reason.

1. Run the diagnosis card on Draft A aloud. Structure: claim, two reasons, conclusion — right for an opinion. Sentences: "very" four times, "a lot of bugs" is vague. Verdict on the board: "Shape fine, sentences weak — REVISE."
2. Revise two sentences in front of them: "They eat very many bugs every night" becomes "A single little brown bat can eat hundreds of mosquitoes in one night." "That is very helpful" becomes "Without them, some desert plants such as the agave could not make seeds."
3. Run the card on Draft B. Ask: "What is this piece actually about?" Fish for: "It's about the writer reading a book, not about volcanoes." Sentences are fine. Structure is wrong: it is ordered by the writer's afternoon, not by how a volcano forms.
4. Try revising Draft B sentence by sentence to show it failing: improving "Then I read about plates" to "Next I carefully read about tectonic plates" leaves it just as wrong. Say: polishing sentences can't fix a shape.
5. Start again with a new approach, named first on the board: "Cause and effect, in the order it happens underground." Write: "Deep inside the Earth it is hot enough to melt rock. This melted rock, called magma, is lighter than the solid rock around it, so it rises. Where two of the Earth's plates pull apart, the magma finds a way up. When it bursts through the surface, it is called lava, and as it cools in layers, it builds a volcano."
6. Ask what was kept from the old draft. Answer: every fact — hot inside, plates, magma rising. Only the sentences and the order were thrown away. Write the rule: "Starting again keeps your research. It throws away the shape."

“The sentences in Draft B are fine. The shape is wrong, and no amount of sentence work fixes a shape. So ask two questions every time: is the order right for what this piece is for, and are the sentences doing their job? Shape wrong means start again. Shape right means revise.”

1. Students run the two-question card on their own draft and write a verdict: "Shape ___, sentences ___, so I will ___."
2. They explain the verdict to a partner, who must either agree or disagree with a reason. Disagreements are good: let the pair reread one paragraph together and decide.
3. Students who chose "new approach" write the new structure in one line before writing a word, then list the facts they are keeping from the old draft.
4. Students who chose "revise" rewrite their three weakest sentences.

“Before you start again, say your new shape out loud in one line. If your new shape sounds like your old one, you're not starting again, you're retyping.”

1. Students complete the revising page: two drafts that need different decisions, a diagnosis box for each, and room to revise one paragraph or replan the other.

1. Take one "revise" and one "new approach" verdict and ask each writer to name the problem in one sentence.