Literature Review

Improving the Quality of 2nd Grade Student Writing Revisions
Literature Review
Katherine Barney

Improving the Quality of Primary Level Student Revisions
Primary students are easily frustrated with and reluctant to revise their writing. They are often confused between revision and editing. Revision can be defined as an examination of the text already produced, eventually followed by a step involving corrections or modifications brought to the initial version of the text (Temple, Nathan, Temple, & Burris, 1993). Editing comes at the end when the writing is ready to be reviewed for accuracies. After reflecting on student performance this past year, as well as my instructional strategies, I felt dissatisfied with the quality of writing produced. This led me to ask, “How can I help my second grade students improve their writing using revision strategies?” I want to improve student effort during writing.
The first step in the writing process is to motivate students to want to write. Then teach the students to use their own writing to learn how to revise. An important finding in several revision studies has indicated that students are more successful in making revisions when using their own work. Cameron, Edmunds, Wigmore, Hunt, & Linton (1997) documented that student revision increased when 1st – 5th grade students used personal writing. Students also dramatically increased in ability to make revisions between grade 2 and grade 4. The results imply that second and third grade teachers have a strong influence on student writing abilities. Tina Robertson (2000) found that students responded to and continued to use more revision strategies when she used students’ own work rather than artificially generated work with errors. Elbow (1998) emphasized the importance of writing long pieces so that there is plenty to revise. One model of revision is to cut the paper into strips removing and/or adding text. Calkins (2003) recommends inserting blank paper where the cuts are made so that new sentences or words can be added. This technique can be extended by combining or adding on to sentences as illustrated by Smith (1996), member of the Okalahoma Writing Project. Smith designed a technique to teach students to reduce words/sentences using an Aesop fable that she extended to seventeen sentences as an example. She challenged the groups to return the fable to its original five sentences. The students responded favorably and were able to transfer the strategy of combining sentences to their own writing.
Putting written work aside a few days helps students look at their stories from a different point of view. Chanquoy, L. (2001) designed a study delaying writing and revising. The number of overall revisions increased about 2% in the delayed (next day) strategy. I wondered if second grade students would benefit form this. Which led me to ask, “Are second graders ready to revise?” Beal (1990) compared student ability to identify and make revisions to errors made in teacher written text with 3rd through 6th grade students. She discovered that 3rd graders were just as likely to make revisions as 6th graders indicating that students are capable of revising at their developmental level. This caused me to conclude that second grade students are ready to revise.
In almost all of the research it was determined that teacher modeling was necessary for students to be successful in writing. Cameron, Edmunds, Wigmore, Hunt, & Linton (1997) found that students were most successful in applying revision strategies when they watched the teacher model how to revise first. The pre-teaching of revision strategies improved student ability to make appropriate corrections. Matsumara, Patthey-Chavez, Valdes & Garnier (2002) conducted a case study involving several different urban schools. While there were differences attributed to socio-economic status they observed that the quality of teacher feedback made more impact on student revisions than the economic status of the school. In order to support students in revision growth teacher support and scaffolding is necessary. Another important factor that supported revision improvement was the use of engaging assignments. Vygotsky (1978) concluded that students performed better when they were engaged with learning.
Mini-lessons targeting student needs is an effective tool during the writing process. A study by Shoudong & Powers (2005) on the effect of mini-lessons on errors identified by the teacher indicated that measurable improvement was made using this technique. The study emphasized that it was imperative that the teacher read and address student weaknesses frequently. It is best to use teacher-guided revision before adding peer revision techniques. Marchionda (2004) wanted to improve student editing so she developed a peer review strategy that involved having two different students edit each paper. Marchionda observed the following; students interacted in a non-threatening atmosphere, students learned to take criticism constructively, and the input from two different people helped the student address more aspects of their writing. She concluded that student editing and quality of writing increased with two-peer conferencing. To improve the quality of instruction and student writing I plan to implement the strategies of modeling revision strategies on my own writing first, encouraging a lot of writing in order to implement the cutting strategy for combining and adding, reading and responding to my students personally for several weeks before teaching peer editing, use the two peer editing strategies outlined by Marchionda.