Third, Fourth, and Fifth graders across Texas will have to complete revise and edit questions as a part of their STAAR Reading Test. STAAR revise and edit practice is imperative for students to be successful on this section of the test.
What will you do to prepare your students for the STAAR revise and edit questions?
As a 4th grade teacher, I’ve been preparing students for the revise and edit questions for over ten years.
I have compiled a list of activities that I’ve found to be helpful for STAAR revise and edit practice.
Grammar Rules
First, I introduce grammar rules at the beginning of the year. Heavy loading grammar rules will help when students need to answer questions over these rules.
I created a helpful grammar pacing guide for 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade teachers. It is a FREE calendar that suggests an order that grammar skills should be taught the first 12 weeks of school.
As students are taught a grammar rule, they put the rule in their Writing Notebook. They can refer to the notebook throughout the year when doing STAAR revise and edit questions.
Hands On Practice
After teaching the grammar rules, students need hands-on practice.
First, they can practice individual grammar rules in small groups or centers with grammar games.
Games give students a differentiated way of learning grammar.
Additionally, when you introduce revise and edit question stems, hands-on practice is necessary.
Students need to physically plug in the sentences in paragraphs or the words in sentences. These hands-on activities and tips for specific revise and edit questions stems can be found in this resource STAAR Revising and Editing Strategies
More tips for specific STAAR revising question stems can be found in my blog post: Teaching STAAR Revising Strategies.
Repetitive Practice
Practice makes permanent. In other words, the more you practice STAAR revise and edit question stems, the more comfortable your students become with the wording and strategies.
There are several ways students can practice. Firstly, TEA released examples of revise and edit questions for each grade tested. Additionally, old STAAR Writing tests contain many revise and edit questions.
I have Skill Specific Revise and Edit Practice and Texas Reading & Revise and Edit Passages. These resources give students lots of extra revise and edit practice.
Also, it’s important to keep it fun because students will get bored if you keep giving them independent practice pages.
Make it FUN!
One way to make STAAR revise and edit practice fun is to have students work together in groups. I have a fun Holiday Revise and Edit passages with QR codes. Students work with a partner to answer these revise and edit questions on specific holidays.
In my classroom, I post the questions around the room. Students travel in pairs answering the questions, and they can self check with the QR code.
Challenges and break out rooms are fun ways to keep students engaged in STAAR revise and edit practice.
In addition to challenges, you could take a regular revise and edit passage and cut apart the questions. Then place them in envelopes. As students get a question right, you give them the next question. Whichever individual or team finishes first, wins a prize!
That was a lot of information!
There are so many ways for your 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students to get STAAR revise and edit practice.
More specific revise and edit strategies can be found on my blog post: Revise and Edit Strategies for 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade.
If you’re looking for all these amazing resources in one BUNDLE, check out my Revise and Edit Practice Bundle.
Revise and Edit Practice BUNDLE
