Rainbow Edit

Rainbow Edit:

Every paragraph should be a RAINBOW

after you check it over!

Red – Capitals – all capitals! Beginning of sentences and proper nouns

Orange – Periods or end punctuation marks

Yellow – Indent – highlight the blank spot at the front of EACH paragraph

Green – Topic Sentence – underline it

Blue – Details – add more adjectives, add more information – where do you want to add more?

Purple – Check your spelling. Any words you aren’t sure about? Look it up using spell check on the computer or ask a neighbor to help.

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It's pretty self explanatory - it has to be for 4th graders. Basically last year I was fed up with kids saying they did the editing process, when really they didn't. This system made them check each paragraph and color code it (which they loved). When they finished editing, they would show me, and it turned into a quick glance to see that they really did check things over before the final draft. In my classroom I only grade the final drafts, so the quick glance was my way of making sure they were reminded to do their best before the official grade. 

As for using spell check on the computers... well, I wanted my students to show independence instead of asking me to spell words - not the words that they should know how to spell, but the longer vocabulary/synonym type words that they were expanding their horizons with. I just pulled up a word document on the student computers, and they typed it in. It did the normal things that we associate with spell check - a red line if it's spelled incorrectly, and I taught them to right click on the word to get different spelling options. They then had to figure out the correct spelling and write that word on a separate paper in their writing folders. The correctly spelled words stayed on that word document for the entire writing time, so students could see the other words and gather ideas. Their word lists became longer, and I was a happy camper conferencing with students instead of spelling words.  

Check out Emily's blog.  She has some great things!   http://www.ilovemyclassroom.blogspot.com/search/label/Writing