Do you know how to teach editing to your students with absolutely no stress?

 Do you know how to teach editing to your upper elementary students? You can teach them to self edit and peer edit with CUPS in just 5 minutes

 

Home » TeacherWriter.co Blog and News » Teaching Writing » Do you know how to teach editing to your students with absolutely no stress?

 

I used to think it was too stressful to teach editing to a large class of students. I also thought that students didn’t pay attention to my edits anyway. How do you feel about teaching editing to your students?

In my heart of teacher hearts, I knew I wasn’t helping my students by doing the editing for grammar and punctuation on their papers for them. They needed to learn how to take action for themselves. 

 

My son had a fabulous teacher in 5th grade who was meticulous about reviewing and grading work. Even though my son was a good writer, all of his papers came back with editing marks on them for grammar issues. 

Can you imagine how much time she spent on that paperwork? Her class of thirty students had daily writing assignments. It’s mind boggling.

In my first year of teaching I thought that’s what teachers were supposed to do. 

However, I noticed something strange. Even though I went over the students’ papers and made fabulous and very helpful notes about things they should change, instead of correcting their own writing, what did they do?

They wrote their final drafts with the same mistakes, but with slightly neater handwriting.

Has that ever happened to you? 

Obviously, the students weren’t learning editing skills. I needed to change that.

How Can Students Learn to Edit Their Own Writing?

I sent myself on a mission to find out how to teach students to peer edit and self edit. They needed to learn how to correct their own mistakes.

1. I asked other teachers what they did. I asked my principal.
2. Next, I scoured online forums and groups.
3. I talked ad nauseum with my very patient husband.

Finally, I decided to adapt the C.U.P.S. strategy of editing. I customized this simple system with my own tools and strategies. Every year I improved on it and every year I saw excellent student growth in their writing abilities.

Today I’m sharing that system with you, my friend.

Teaching Editing with C.U.P.S.

This system is part of my Daily Writing Prompts digital journal. The students use this interactive version to drag highlighters across their writing to edit. It’s strictly for editing grammar and punctuation. It’s not for revising or editing for theme, voice, or content. You may have heard of C.U.P.S. before today, but here’s what each letter represents.

• C=capitalization

• U=usage (subject verb agreement, proper use of plural nouns, etc.)

• P=punctuation

• S=spelling

Here are the steps I found most effective in teaching editing for grammar and punctuation.

1. Students sit together if they are peer editing or alone if they’re self editing.
2. They have four highlighting strips. One is for capitalization, one is for usage, one is for punctuation, one is for spelling. 
3. Using a reading guide highlighter, or in the case of my digital notebook, a moveable highlighter strip, the student reads the paragraph out loud four times. 
4. In the first pass, they read the entire paragraph out loud with the highlighting strip for capitalization. Anywhere they need to capitalize a word, they stop and correct it.
5. After that, they do the same with the usage highlighter strip. I like to use four different colors of strips. You can see that in the image of the highlighters.
6. Third, they read the paragraph aloud again for punctuation.
7. Finally, they read the paragraph aloud again with the highlighter strip for spelling and they circle any words they think might be misspelled.

Using the C.U.P.S. system, students should be able to edit a one page writing assignment in about 5 minutes. Even if it’s not perfect, just remember that “Done is Better than Perfect.” 

 

 

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TIP: Teach Editing to the Class or Small Groups First

Of course, you’ll want to teach this system to your students in small groups before you have them do their own editing. No matter how good they get at it, they’re still going to come to you with questions about grammar points in their writing.

That’s wonderful! It means they’re becoming more cognizant of their own writing. They’re learning to be aware of the words they put to pen, pencil, or keyboard.

Here’s an image that’s inside of many of my writing products. It’s a page of student instructions. (Just in case they forget!) 🙂

In the digital writing journals, they can slide the semi-transparent bar across their writing to help them spot things to correct.

If you encourage daily writing in your classroom, they’ll get better and better at this skill as the school year passes.

 

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words. Watch This Video to Learn More About Editing With CUPS

When You Teach Students to Self-Edit and Peer Edit It Saves You So Much Time

At first, it may seem time-intensive to do this. But it’s an investment for your future and it’s well worth it. In the end, once you’ve taught the students how to do this, you’ll have extra time to work with students one-to-one or in small groups. You’ll be reviewing their writing in class, instead of on the weekends at home. 

After you’ve taught this skill, two very wonderful things will happen.

1. Students will be doing more of the work and learning more.
2. You’ll never have to edit writing at home on a weekend again.

I hope these tips and this system are helpful to you. You don’t want to spend all your time editing student writing, like my son’s teacher did.

While you’re here, you can help yourself to some free writing checklists and other writing activities for you on the Member Vault page.

If you want to read more about teaching writing in the upper elementary grades, I recommend this post next:

How to Begin Teaching Writing on the Very First Day (Even if You’ve Never Taught It Before)

 

P.S. Before you go, if you or another teacher wants to learn how to teach editing with C.U.P.S., I’d love for you to share this post.

 

Because every teacher deserves the weekend to relax!