Writing Literary Essays in Spanish Part IV - Drafting, Revising, Editing and Publishing

I have really enjoyed this unit. When I first started planning, I felt really overwhelmed and really out of…something. I guess, the unit was just intimidating. However, as we moved to drafting, revising, editing and publishing, I can say that it all started to finally make sense. I needed to trust the process, but it was hard. Anyways, in this post I am explaining what my students and I did during the last few stages in the writing cycle.

Drafting

IT IS NOT WRITING THE ENTIRE ESSAY ALL OVER AGAIN. Yes, you read that right. The way we designed and planned our ‘essay’ organization really allowed students to move around parts and cut/paste what was needed. At this point, we took each one of the mini-folders, read all the parts to make sure they made sense and put them together. I love to call this part surgery.

The yellow folders were designated for both the introduction and conclusion

On the rug, meeting with a small group who was ready to start revising right away

We start our unit with a black pen, then move to use blue to revise

Revising

Students
were exposed to several mini-lessons addressing revising strategies
including but not limited to transitional words, writing more effective
intros and conclusions, adding more sophisticated vocabulary words, how to signal quotes and how to elaborate on them (super important in
essay writing). We spend about 3 extra days revising. Our rubric was
SUPER helpful here as students were able to independently
look at their pieces (for the most part) and make necessary
adjustments. Below are some photos of what this crazy (but lovely)
process looked like. Again, the system we used was really helpful as students could see each part of the essay very clearly.

Editing

We talked in detail about different grammatical rules (including punctuation). Also, almost every mini-lesson before the formal ‘editing’ included a mid-workshop teaching point that addressed many grammatical needs my students had. We use green pens to edit.

Publishing

Students typed their essays, printed them AND posted them on our class blog for parents and other students to see and comment.

Celebrating

No writing unit goes unnoticed. This time we shared our pieces with students at the primary level (first and second grade).