Writing Lesson Plan · Grades 4–7

Editing and Revision Lesson

Teach students how to review their own writing with two complementary checklists: an editing checklist for grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and a revision checklist for word choice, sentence structure, and overall flow.

Lesson Overview

Editing and Revision: Two Different Jobs

Editing and revising are different stages of the writing process. Editing catches errors — misspellings, missing punctuation, sentence fragments, wrong homophones (there/their/they’re), capitalization mistakes. Revising improves quality — better word choice, varied sentence openings, stronger nouns and verbs, smoother organization.

This lesson gives students two structured checklists they can apply to any piece of writing. The editing checklist covers seven essentials including spell-check limits, the four sentence types, and tense consistency. The revision checklist covers eight strategies including using a thesaurus, adding figurative language, and reorganizing for impact.

How to Use This Lesson

1. Distribute Worksheet 1 (Editing Checklist) and walk through each item. Emphasize the limits of computer spell-check — it won’t catch wrong-word errors like there vs their.

2. Have students apply the editing checklist to a recent piece of writing. Optionally pair students up to peer-edit each other’s work using the same checklist.

3. Move to Worksheet 2 (Revision Checklist). Discuss how revision is different from editing: it’s about making writing better, not just correct. Students apply the revision checklist to improve word choice, vary sentence structure, and add figurative language.

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