Travis: Hello PoPCast listeners. Today, Whitney and I are going to talk through the lesson process for any lesson in Patterns of Revision, so that you have a better understanding of that beginning to end flow of a Patterns of Revision. So, without further ado, let’s jump in.
Yeah. Yeah. So let's highlight just the process, like how a lesson is set up, to give listeners maybe a broad idea of, hey, what encompasses a full lesson? What does that look like? Where do we start? Where do we end? How do we weave through this process?
Whitney: Our process for every lesson, no matter what it is, we follow the same process. We have to begin with setting context because we are setting our students up for revision.
And so in order for them to revise, they have to have an understanding of whatever the context is, whatever the content of the book is that we are looking at. And so when I think too just about what is revision, Sometimes I'll ask students that, what is revision? And they'll say something like "Oh it's when I fix it to make it better." It's okay, tell me more about that. What do you do? And a lot of times they'll say, "Oh, I put some periods in and I changed my spelling and make sure my sentences begin with a capital letter." That's editing.
And so we want to talk more about revision and what that means. And I always tell students revision is a chance to play with your writing. It's a chance to play, try some different things out with the content that's there to see what would be most effective for your reader. So, with that, we have to set the context for our students.
We do that through a very short read aloud. We read part of the book longer than just a sentence, and we'll read a good chunk of it, or, at least set context around what this book is about. And within that, behind the scenes, we have [00:02:00] created a need for revision. So, maybe we've taken a sentence out or we've added in an additional sentence.
There's work that we've done behind the scenes for that read aloud to create this need for revision. And so through that read aloud, they're gaining context of what the book and the content is about. But then we can also move into the direct naming of the revision strategies. When writers revise, one thing they can do is When we go back to our writing to look it over for revision, one thing we can look for is, and so we're, directly naming what we're going to do in the lesson right there.
And from there, we move into the modeling piece. So the modeling piece is hands-on. We want students to be touching, Parts of this writing physically touching it, moving it around or adding something in or taking a sentence out. So we're modeling how to do that first and engaging our students in that talk through the whole time on.
When I model during this part of the process, I'm looking at the sentences from the text and saying, "Oh, what would happen if I put this sentence first?" knowing I know that's not the order it's supposed to go in. But through that modeling, we're inviting students to have conversations about what that Really wouldn't work. And why not? Let's try something else to show them the work that they'll turn around and do on their own first through the collaborating conversation and then onto applying in their own writing too.
So, I just think it's, The modeling piece is just crucial, right? Like we want to model with our own writing. We want to model the conversations that we would have and trying things out, even if we're not really sure if it's right or not. Because there's this [00:04:00] thing that it's not always about the right answer, right?
It's about the options that we have as writers.
Travis: We have each lesson set up where there is a specific kind of, we're going to do this work together, modeling where we have a chunk of the text, where we're going to work through that revision strategy that we want to highlight for students.
From there, we share the author's original to do some of that, to extend that conversation around, Hey what, Choices did we make? What did we think was the most effective way to, to add an idea, to delete an idea, to rearrange this writing, whatever the case may be. And then we take a look at what the author did in their published, their final published writing and have some of those conversations around. What was similar about the two, maybe what's different about the two, how do we feel like ours is an effective choice as well?
What do we like about it? What do we see when we look at the authors? How does that help us to revise our thinking as well? And, that thinking and that reflection, then allows us to catapult into that next step, the collaborating through conversation. This is where we give students a partner or small group task of interacting with another model from that same text.
So they're familiar with the content and then they do some work together. They, we're not guiding them. We might be walking around the class, sitting next to them and helping them out a little bit or asking questions, but They're in charge. They're in the driver's seat of whatever strategy that is.
They're going to work through that strategy together now with another example. So
Whitney: talking it out the whole time. And that's why we put some reflective questions in every lesson and that's for you, the teacher and teacher can have those on hand. So when you're popping into some of these conversations, you can guide that [00:06:00] open ended conversation even more to get them thinking about it.
More so about the choices they're making. And I always invite students to try two or three options during that time to again, do what we did in the modeling and really think through the most effective choice. And one thing that we will find out in quite a few of the lessons is at the end of this piece, when we compare their choice to the model, it's not always the exact same choice.
And that is okay. And that's what we want our students to have this understanding of is, it's okay to have something different, but we're going to talk about our thinking behind that again, talk it out and engage in those conversations.
Travis: Yeah. And I know if I'm going to maybe gather any type of assessment of thinking around this, in this part of the process, it's not a.
I'm not going to look for did you do what the author did? I'm going to look for gathering that reflective writing, that reflection afterward, what did you learn from this and maybe some sort of goal setting? How is this going to help you as you apply your understanding? What are you going to try to do in your writing?
Now we've studied here, not only the process, but also just studying this author. We chose authors who we want to elevate the writing because we think it's great. We love the writing that they're doing the content the way that they're organizing the content.
Yeah how they're crafting it. We loved it. We were drawn in I know that was maybe one of my favorite parts of this process was just getting to read so much and to be able to just see wow, that author really like this section is just so beautiful or so informative or so whatever the case may be, whatever their goal was just to see how adeptly they just knocked that goal out of the park.
As a reader. So we really wanted to lift that up for students to see as much good writing as they can't [00:08:00] write as much effective writing as possible.
Whitney: And that leads us into the next part of the process then is them going back to their own writing now and applying the specific strategy that we've taught them through the lesson.
I want our listeners to have this understanding that revision can happen with any piece of writing. So if you're writing about reading, if you're writing a narrative, if you're writing informational, feel like a lot of our writing right now is all about reading and doing a lot of constructed responses and writing like that we can.
We can take that during the applying revision and put these strategies to use there. So this is where they go back to a piece of writing they're working on or previous pieces of writing. They can look at multiple ones to really think about the strategies that they've learned so far and how to apply them into their own writing.
And what's nice about this you Is because we've taken them through this process and there's been so much conversation. They have an understanding of what they can do as a writer. And so when they go back to their piece, they actually have something specific to look for, because they've engaged in so much conversation about their, the strategy and how they could work it within text that's provided to them.
They then can go back to their own writing and they know specifically what to look for, whether they're looking for some repetition, which they find when they didn't realize they had it there before . Or they can, they really consider their order and how might they take one part of their piece of writing and really analyze the order that's there and think about, should it go in a different order?
Those are just some examples, right? But it's so specific as to what they can do, but then their options are endless. So it really opens their doors to [00:10:00] really dive deeper into actually revising their piece rather than just changing a word.
Travis: And, to really promote that this is a joyful, fun experience where play is at the center of it, we're going to play around with our writing.
This is where we offer suggestions for you as well in the application, the applying revision section, for you to pull a piece of your own writing, for you to put it up for students, and for you to talk through. Hey, what strategy are we working on? Is there something that seems obvious here? In my experience, I've noticed that students, if they may have some struggles with revisiting their own writing with a critical eye, they have no trouble revisiting other writing, especially mine.
If I'm going to put that up, they have a very sharp critical eye. And what a great opportunity to highlight how this process of critical analysis of someone else's writing can be positive and helpful. It doesn't have to be something that leads me to tears. This is a great way for me to curve that into a safe and social environment.
Whitney: And if we've done any class writing, if we've done some shared writing together, this is a great time to pull that out and come back to it as a class. What do you think we should do before they move into their own as well?
Travis: Our final part of a lesson flow is sharing results: giving time and space in the classroom for students to share their before and after the work that they've done to enhance their writing. Throughout the book, within each lesson, we share novel, individual ways that you can share with your students or facilitate sharing between your students, whether it be in small groups, independently, offline, online. But we also know that you have a wealth of novel ways for [00:12:00] students to share. We really wanted to highlight the importance of not only celebrating students and the work that they're doing because we know that we in our classroom celebrate what we want repeated, but also this is another way to really enhance.
student understanding about the possibility of revision. When I hear one, two, three of my classmates, what they started with and where they went with this understanding, that really helps me as well. I get to absorb that to think through Ooh, this is another possibility. So it really helps students to absorb some other effective options as well.
Whitney: For sure. And we often provide some sentence stems for students to use during this time to where, Oh, I noticed you did this to your writing. It helped me as a reader by diving a little bit deeper than just sharing and saying, what is the way to go? I'm being a little bit more specific about, Oh, this was a revision I made and this is why I made it. So we, Some of our celebrations are sharing parts of the lessons that have these stems in there to help continue that conversation as they talk out their revisions.
Travis: That is the process. That process is predictable from third grade through eighth grade. You're going to see the same routine from setting the context to sharing results in every resource, which is something that we love about this. There's a predictability to the routine, but there's so much flexibility and so much opportunity for students to take ownership of the learning in each of these phases.
Whitney: And that entire process is one lesson. You can break that up over two days if you need to, if you want to give them some time if you want a little bit more time for that modeling or a little bit more time for that application but that entire process is the lesson. And it's the same [00:14:00] in every lesson, just a different focus and different revision strategy.
Travis: Absolutely. Yeah. So if you're thinking about, Hey, I have a 90 minute class. That is a great amount of time for you to complete an entire lesson in one class period. If you are worried that students might not have that attention span for 90 minutes, you're welcome to break that up.
Or, hey, I have a 47 minute class, Travis and Whitney. What you can do is you can break it in half. Whitney just talked about splitting it, and we think that splitting it after modeling is a great idea. So set the context for students, name the revision strategy, and take students through that modeling, and that is one great stand-alone part one.
Part two, the next day, would be collaborating through conversation, applying that revision work to students' own writing, and then giving them the opportunity to share their results. Very nicely segmented without really losing too much steam. And then it allows you, if you have predictable routines, you've already set up in your classroom, Hey, we're doing independent choice reading for 10 minutes. That's a non negotiable. If you still want to make sure that lives there, then splitting a lesson up into two days can still be highly impactful.
Whitney: So Travis, just to end I wanted to think about this quote and it really comes from Jeff Anderson, that it's in Patterns of Revision. I think it's in the six through eight, as well as the three through five. But this is just important for us to have this understanding and for our students to have this understanding too, is “Revision is not corrective. Although revision makes writing better, most of the time, it isn't about fixing writing as much As it is about playing with the order, effectiveness, and clarity of words, phrases, and paragraphs. Writers revise to make sure what they write is what they mean. As always, it's about meaning and effect, not right and wrong.”
Travis: Jeff, you so wise.
Whitney: He really is.
Travis: We love you, man. We love you.
Travis: There it is: Patterns of Revision. We feel like you have a better understanding from that kind of 30, 000 foot view of what this thing is.
This looks cool. I'm intrigued. But what is it about so we hope that this time together has given you some clarity around that. We're going to dig a little bit deeper in future episodes around each standalone chapter. So deleting, we're going to talk all about that in our next episode.
Then we'll get into one about rearranging. We'll go through the entire process. So that you have even more clarity. Or if you're just getting started, you've got the book in hand and you're ready to go and incorporate this into classroom practice, we're going to help talk you through or be a guide on the side for you, maybe on your way to work, to help you.
Whitney: There you go. I like that. I love it. And if you do have the book in hand, the lesson process that we just went through with you very quickly every lesson is written into that process. So you can open up to any lesson and you'll see like the file folder. Look to it, the layout each file folder tab is a different part of this process.
So you'll see that already in every single lesson that you look at. So there's a starting point. If you want a little homework before the next, before the next episode, you can go ahead and just explore a lesson to look for those parts of the process: the setting the context, naming a revision strategy, modeling, collaborating through conversation, applying revision, [00:18:00] and then sharing results.
Travis: Thank you for hanging out with us. Can't wait to chat again soon.
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