EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVES / 21

nHOW COME YOU'RE TELLING US HOW YOUR MOTHER HATES LIVER

WHEN YOUR TOPIC IS POPCORN?" Revision in the Fifth Grade

Ruth B. Canham

Researchers such as Linda Flower, 1 Donald Graves,2 and Nancy Sommers3 state that the ability to revise successful­ly separates good writers from poor ones, but little infor­mation is available about how to teach revision, partic­ularly to elementary children. Therefore I decided to emphasize revision in my fifth-grade class and to docu· ment student progress. I hoped to learn what types of problems my students encountered, how they went about solving those problems, and ways to encourage successful revision.

The goal I used for my students came from Susan Wall. 4 For her, the purpose of revision is lo "bring out the central ideas of a paper ... reorganize main points ... add supporting examples and ... change statements the" reader might not understand." I knew that elementary children could handle minor additions and deletions in their work, but I wanted to help them learn to view a paper holistically in order to detect and correct unclear messages and to rearrange major ideas rather than simply making word level changes. Because this would require a student to look back over what had been written and for­ward to what needed to be explained or expanded, I knew that this would be an extremely complicated task for the children.

After two weeks of daily writing, each student selected an original piece which he was willing to continue to work on over a period of time. I explained that students needed to practice writing just as they practice soccer or the piano to improve. I divided the children into five con­ference groups so that authors encountered various points of view; I met with each group for 30 minutes weekly. Initially our conferences were highly teacher­dominated. I taught the children questioning strategies which stress the importance of revision by asking the listeners: What revisions do you notice since last week? What changes do you think might make this writing better. I asked the authors: What did you revise? What do you plan to revise this week? These questions generat­ed good discussions and the children accurately remem­bered the writing from the previous week. During the

early conferences children were given time to make changes and discuss them, as part of the conference. Later they were asked to revise their work independently at another time during the week. I posted examples of revi­sions on bulletin boards and the class discussed them. During the first two months of school, students responded in writing to questions about conferences and revision, such as: What is the purpose of a writing conference? How does a conference work? What is revision? What problems have you had revising? Show your best revision before and after a conference. We discussed each of these papers as a class.

During the semester each child maintained a folder of work in progress (no papers were discarded) while I kept brief notes on each conference. In November I began making photocopies of student drafts and audiotapes of our discussions, which were subsequently transcribed and which became the basis for most of the dialogues in this paper. So, when I selected a student, Christy, to study, I had already amassed a great deal of written information about her.

Christy was a fifth-grade student of average verbal abil­ity experiencing the writing conference for the first time. My August notes indicated that her writing lacked coher­ence and details. In September she was assigned to a con­ference group with four other students who were inexpe­rienced with the revision process. I eventually selected Christy for my study because her folder revealed a large number of revisions. There were words and phrases crossed out and added, scribbling between lines and around margins, and arrows pointing various places. Christy also had an interesting habit of dabbling with titles, showing as many as four on one draft, and I won­dered whether these practice titles served a purpose as she experimented. On closer examination I noted that the number of revisions she made increased dramatically after she began to confer and that she revised more on her second paper than on her first. I wanted to see what I could learn about how and why she changed her drafts. I was interested in what Christy thought revising meant.

22 /EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

In September Christy has described a writing conference as "a time when people read and correct the things they wrote." In October she commented that "I have one big problem in revising and it is I need to make new para­graphs. Usually 1 just keep on going, even though it's a new subject. Another problem is knowing which word to use." At this time Christy was typical of the unskilled writers Ellen Nold5 describes as "stuck on words .... They viewed revision as 'finding the right word' and (changed) their prose to conform to the rules of written English as they understood them." Christy revised by adding, changing or deleting single words and occasional­ly by adding details.

While writing her second story, "How to Make Pop­corn," Christy began to experiment with new revision strategies. She attempted to turn a previous math lab as­signment into a story by adding an introduction. The result:

"How to Make Popcorn" (Draft l, November 1)

Popcorn is not the easiest thing to make, but not the hard­est, either. I love to cook, to me it's an experiment because I'm only ten years old. Still it's fun because the best part is eating what you've made. Sometimes cooking can be very frustrating too, like when you bought the wrong in­gredients or things like that. Usually peoplt! make what they want to eat, some eat anything and some make what they hate. In my house I'm not the cook, my mother is, but she cooks only things we like. My mother loves liver, and my dad hates liver so she doesn't make liver. (I halt! liver too.) Right now I want to teach you how to make popcorn.

"Popcorn" ingredients: popcorn machine

salt bowl butter

"The computer way of milking popcorn ''

(This third title is followed by 15 directions.)

About her first draft, Christy said, "You just put every­thing down, my ideas ... made little sense." At this point, her "story" was a freewriting exercise. It showed no overall plan or sense of audience and lacked voice. The uses of "I," "you," "my mother," "my father," and "people" reflected her lack of point of view and focus. However, what Christy did was not entirely random, for she set up a series of dichotomies which gave her a range of choices to develop her story:

Popcorn isn't the easiest thing ... but not the hardest, either. I love to cook .•. in my house I'm not the cook. Cooking is fun ... cooking can be frustrating too. Some people milke what they want . . . some milkc what they hate. Mother loves liver ... di!d hates liver.

Rather than limiting herself by making commitments too early, Christy was using an open and experimental ap­proach to writing. At first she brainstormed to explore possible topics and opinions. Later, as her paper devel­oped, she dropped some of these contradictory remarks entirely while reshaping others as she discovered her main ideas. "Popcorn isn't the easiest thing" changed to "Cooking isn't the easiest thing to do," while the state­ment, "Cooking can be fun ... (and) frustrating too" eventually became the theme of her final paper.

When Christy read her piece to her peers, they had dif­ficulty summarizing her writing. Kale's question, "How come you're telling us how your mother hates liver when your topic is popcorn?" caused the entire group, teacher and author included, to burst into giggles. Yet Kale's com ­ment was perceptive, for he was helping Christy detect a major problem in her writing - that it had no focus. Christy's own comments showed that she only partially understood the remarks her peers made. She said, "They don't understand ... if I read something wrong ... like grammar." From the author's point of view, the problem was in the audience, her reading, or her grammar, but she also remembered that the group was concerned about "whether you're off the topic." She knew her message was not getting through, but didn't understand why.

After this conference Christy began to look at the whole piece of writing and her main idea, rather than isolated words. When she revised, she selected only five sentences and a phrase which she liked and deleted the rest of the writing. In Peter Elbow's terms, 6 she found the "center of gravity" in her writing. This effort to identify her topic was reflected in her title changes. Her original draft had three titles: "How to make Popcorn," "Pop­corn," and "The computer way of making popcorn." Her second draft was entitled simply, "Cooking," although another title, "Cooking and How to make Popcorn," had been crossed out. These title changes mimic Christy's writ ­ing process as she uses brainstorming to get ideas flowing, then selects the parts of her writing which work best. Christy's procedure was to select a topic, freewrite on it, select a new topic, freewrite, etc.; by applying the tech­nique of topic selection to the paragraph level, she seems to have discovered on her own what Elbow calls "looping."

For the first time, Christy let go of irrelevant informa­tion. This strategy brings her a step closer to Nold's de­scription of skilled writers, who "added and deleted large chunks of discourse first, and then considered their sen­tences and words."7 Christy has certainly not jumped from being an unskilled writer to being a skilled writer, but she has attempted a rather sophisticated approach to revision for a fifth-grade student. The result is a draft which shows a more logical train of thought:

"Cooking" (Draft 2, November 7)

Cooking is not the easit.'St thing to do. I Jove to cook to me it's an experiment bt.>eause I'm only ten years old. Still it's fun because the bt.'St pilrt is eating what you've rnilde. Sometimes cooking can be very frustrating too. Like when you've bought the wrong ingredients or things like !hilt. Usuillly people make what they want to cat. Some Cilt ilnything. In my house I'm not the cook, my mother is but she cooks only things we like.

When Christy reread, rather than "putting down every­thing," she considered Kille's comment and dropped infor­miltion which was boring or unnecess<1ry. This time her ideas were grouped into pilirs. Although her sentences did relilte to a single topic, they were still only loosely tied to one another; she lilcked transitions to tie her sen­tence pilirs together. Christy has deleted large amounts of informiltion, but she has yet to expand and support the ideas which remilin.

When Christy brought her second draft to the writing group, there was a great deal of discussion about her work. The following excerpts show the general question­ing strategy I used in conferring. First I directed a question to iln author, then to the group at large, then to individu­als. When students made comments, I paraphrased them. When I made a suggestion to the author, I gave students time to paraphrase my comment. In this way the iluthor heard the various comments twice, once from the teacher and once in the language of her peers.

TEACHER Christy, how did your writing change this week?

CHRISTY Remember last week you (the group) told me to put cook­ing as another one or take ilWay one story.

TEACHER You had two stories in one.

CHRISTY Uh-huh fogrt.>cs).

TEACHER So what did you do?

CHRISTY I'm going to read "Cooking" to you. Should I tell you what to look for?

TEACHER Yes.

CHRISTY Okay, um, things I've changed and added and took out.

TEACHER Good. Okay. she wants us to notice her revisions, right?

CHRISTY Yeah. (Reads her drart)

TEACHER Okay. (To group) What did you notice? She asked us was it better when she limited it to one topic. (Several children

EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVES / 23

answer at once)

ALIKA The ending is weird. Her mother ... cookt.'CI only what they liked ... . She talked about her mother and combined it or something.

TEACHER Okay. She talks about her cooking and her mother's cook­ing. It's not clcar which one shc rcally wants to know about. And Kalc, what was your comrncnt?

KALE It just ended.

TEACHER It just ended all of a sudden? You didn't foci it was finished?

GROUP No.

MOANA It was so short.

CHRISTY I know.

MOAN A She said they want to cat .. . something like that ... and then she stopped.

KANAN! The part where sht? says my mom only cooks things that we like in the house and it just stops, you know what I mean now?

TEACHER Okay. So what do you want to know more about?

MOAN A About cooking. First she talks about lier cooking and thcn sht? talks about ltcr nwm's cooking. She could tell what about her mom's cooking.

TEACHER Maybe she net.>ds to expand and have a paragraph about herself and her cooking expericnct.>s and a paragraph about her mom and her cooking So you want to know more about her mom's cooking?

ALIKA Maybe she should leave out the mom stuff cause she's talking about cooking and she doesn't (need to) say well, my mom cooks what we like to eat.

TEACHER Alika, that is a very good point. She might want to narrow her topic agam and write about her experiences as a cook She doesn't need to tt!ll us about hers and her mother's, She can if she wants. Okay_ One part that inter­ested me was when you said that cooking can be hard like when you buy the wrong ingredients and I wondered havt? you ever done that? What ingredients did you buy that were wrong? What happened?

MOAN A Well, she could say like ... she bought the wrong ingre­dients. Like she could say like that if that happened to her. Like what she docs like to make.

24 /EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

In this conference students combined critical comments with suggestions for change. There was more discussion and active participation this week because the group had become engaged with the story and wanted Christy to work on it more. They felt Christy's piece was incomplete, and two children pointed out Christy's problem of switch­ing from topic to topic. Moana commented on the length and wanted Christy to separate and expand her ideas. Everyone wanted a better ending. Christy, listening atten­tively, placed stars in the margins of her draft where she would later consider changes, nodded and verbally agreed with many of the comments.

Christy's draft not only changed considerably after this conference but, amazingly, each student comment led to a revision and an improvement:

"Cooking" (Draft 3, November 14)

Cooking is not the easiest thing to do in the world . I love to cook to me it's an experiment beciluse I'm only 10 years old. Still it's fun because the best pi!rt is eating what you've made. Sometimes cooking can be very frustrating too. Like when you've bought the wrong ingre­dients. Did you every buy the wrong ingredients? I remember one time my mother sent me to the store to get plain cheerios. She was going to make Nuts and Bolts. Nuts and Bolts are milde up of cheerios, crispix, peanuts, honeycomb and sometimes pretzels. (You mix them together and add some butter when you cook.) Anyway I was going to the store to get it and I came back with Honeynut Cheerios. My mom was very mad but she used it ilnyway. I remember another time when I was younger my mom sent me to the store to get lettuce. She was going to make sandwiches for lunch. I couldn't tell the difference between lettuce and cabbilge so I bought Cilb­bilge. My mom didn't get mad that time, I guess beciluse I Wi!S smaller but she did go back to the store to get it. Cooking is hi!rd also when you mix the wrong ingredients together. I don't remember •my times where I mixed the wrong ingredients together. Mi!ybe you will though. There might be a lot of things thilt might turn out wrong in cooking but as long as you can read the recipe and follow the directions you should be able to cook.

Having more than tripled the length of her story by adding personal experiences and humor, Christy also made it far more interesting. In this draft she started to entertain her audience and included conversational lines to involve the reader: "Did you ever buy the wrong ingre­dients? Maybe you will though." She concluded with a word of advice and encouragement to the audience. She not only remembered the comments her peers had made the previous week, but her dialogue with the readers seemed to anticipate what her friends might say at the next conference. She has become sympathetic to the needs of her audience at this stage.

When Christy read Draft 3, her peers noticed many specific changes and gave her praise for her efforts:

TEACHER How has she changed her story?

GROUP Oh, she cut out the part where .. . my morn cooks what­ever my dad likes. Yeah .. . she took out. um, my mom likL'S liver

TEACHER Okay, she chilnged the focus. Before we said she hild kind of two stories going at once. She's narrowed it to one topic. What's her topic now?

GROUP Cooking ... about her own cooking . .. about getting all the ingredients and stuff. She told us about what she did.

TEACHER Do you think it's better now?

GROUP Ye;1h. I think it's reildy for the book (the class book of finished stories). It isn't going on to a different subject. She isn't telling every detail.

MOAN A She hild cooking and how to milke popcorn .. . if you put that into a book ... you keep on switching and they (the readers) gel bored because they don't understand it, they get confus~>d . (Moilna is explaining how Christy had prob­lems the week before.)

TEACHER Good. So she narrowL>d it to one topic. Do you have any questions from what she's written now? Is everything clear to you?

KALE She didn't write about ilny experiences like whilt she had cooked that she really likes.

MOAN A Yeah. She could have said I like to cook or something like that.

TEACHER What is your milin idea, Christy? What is the main thing you want to tell us about?

CHRISTY Cooking. Right? No, not how to cook, but what cooking is like. TEACHER Okay. (To group) Whilt were your favorite parts of what she said?

GROUP The part where she said she bought the wrong ingredients,

TEACHER I like it too when she showed humor in it. I thought that WilS really good. What does she say about mixing the wrong ingredients?

ALIKA She doesn't know any story ... times her mom or her mixed the wrong ingredients.

TEACHER Nobody she knows has ever mixed the wrong ingredients?

GROUP Her mom or her.

KANAN! If you wanted to cut your story I would cut that out be· cause you don't have to have it. It's not necessary.

TEACHER (To Christy) You might want to look at that part and see if you want to leave it there. That's up to you. (To group) So you think her story is ii lot better and you notice ii lot of changes ... Christy has done the hi!rdest thing to do in revising. The easiest thing to do is add ii few words or take a few words out. The hilrdest thing is to look at the whole piece fond) change it .... What you've done is really good, Christy. bt.>causc you listent.'Cl to what we said, you could tell that it wasn't clear to us and you focused on one topic. That shows a lot of effort on your part. What do you want to do with the story now?

CHRISTY I would like to tell more about what I like to cook and cut, I don't think I want the part where it's, um, it can also be hard when you mix the things together.

TEACHER If you want to include that, you might want to think of how you can tic that informiltion in with whilt's already in the story.

On December 5 Christy came to the conference with her fourth draft. Again she had experimented with titles:

"Cooking with mistakes" (crossed out)

"My Cooking Conversation" (crossed out)

"Cooking and the mistakes I've made" (Draft 4, December 5)

In this story I am going to talk lo you about cooking and two of the mistakes I've made. Cooking is not the easiest thing to do. I love to cook to me it's an experiment be· cause I'm only ten years old. Still it's fun because the best part is eating what you've made. I especially like to cook saimin (noodle soup) and scrambled t.i;gs because they are easy. Sometimes cooking can be very frustrating. like when you buy the wrong ingredients or when you mix the wrong things together? I don't remember any time when I did that. But I do remember two times when my mother sent me to the store to get plain cheerios, she was going to make Nuts ilnd Bolts. I went to the store to get it ilnd I came back I had honeynut cheerios but because it didn't make a difference when she used my mom used it anyway. I remember another time when I was younger. My mom sent me to the store to get lettuce. She was going to make sandwiches for lunch. Since I was small I didn't know the difference between lettuce and Cilbbage. I made a mistake and bought cabbage. My mom didn't get that mad that time I guess because I was honest but she did go to the store to get the lettuce. There might be a lot of things that might turn out wrong in cooking but as

EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVES I 25

long as you have a recipe and you follow the directions you will have no problem cooking.

Again, Christy made changes directly in response to the comments of her peers: she included what she had cooked, she incorporated the digression about mixing the wrong ingredients into the body of her story, and she changed her title. Christy made further attempts to in­volve her audience: she used the word "Conversation" (which she decided to drop) and began with, "I'm going to talk to you." Communicating with her audience had become highly important to her. Her final title suggests that her thoughts might have been, "Now I've narrowed this piece to two important topics and I think I should write about both cooking and my mistakes." Once this major decision was made she could work to polish her ideas. Her friends summarized her story and compliment· ed Christy's efforts: "It sure improved since the first time we heard it." "Yeah, she changed the beginning." No one had any questions but Moana detected a minor error: "Twice she said that her mom sent her to the store to buy plain Cheerios," which Christy eventually changed in her final draft to read, "I remember two times when my mother sent me to the store and I came back with the wrong things."

Christy's story was published in the class book, Story Mania, and when it was read aloud to an audience of peers and parents, Christy received a round of applause and supportive comments about the best parts of the story. She was pleased with her final product and happy that the audience enjoyed hearing about her experiences. Yet one must admit that this story is not a masterpiece -it would never win an award in a children's writing con­test. But what is remarkable is the learning that was taking place in the process of writing the story, for Chris­ty made discoveries which would go unnoticed by a teacher or evaluator looking only at her final product. In the evolution of a single paper, Christy was learning the importance of selecting an interesting topic, the need to support general statements with details, how to organize her ideas more effectively, and, most importantly. how to communicate with other people in writing. In choosing to redirect the focus of her entire paper, she experimented with different types of writing, beginning by giving direc­tions and ending with a humorous personal narrative. In reworking her drafts she deleted large chunks as well as small bits of information. She dropped the fifteen steps for making popcorn, the ingredients for popcorn, com· ments about who likes and dislikes liver, and such ambig· uous lines as "Usually people make what they want to eat. Some eat anything." She expanded by adding details which were personal, humorous, and which entertained rather than instructed her audience. The two stories about buying the wrong ingredients (her two mistakes)

26 /EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

were stronger in voice and more focused than in her ear­lier drafts. The process of rewriting four drafts taught Christy much more than she could have learned from a single version of her story.

Her writing group was instrumental in helping Christy to understand revision better. In fact, most of her experi­mentation was initiated by peer comments which comple­mented and supported teacher comments, and vice versa. A teacher could have told Christy that she wasn't sticking to one topic or that her focus was unclear, but a teacher would have been highly unlikely to say, "Your ending went zap." Yet, when critical comments came from child­ren her own age, the author knew instantly what they meant and was able to act on her peers' suggestions. Christy's friends helped her to review, plan, and critique. They helped to detect and correct major problems in her writing, and, because they were supportive as well as critical, Christy was comfortable making changes and taking risks. Given time to rework her drafts and help from her conference group, Christy was able to revise ex­tensively and successfully. Even more important is the fact that she was developing a more sophisticated under­standing of revision by learning that a writer needs to rework the main ideas of a paper, rather than simply cor­recting errors or making surface level changes.

In looking at my students' work closely, I found that they revised considerably more and were putting far more effort into improving their writing than I had real­ized. Even my lowest students, some of whom were work­ing on the second-grade level in language skills such as spelling, made numerous changes which usually improved their papers. Some researchers have suggested that child­ren may be unable to revise their own work successfully

and that they probably are not able to make the global changes which are typical of skilled writers. But Christy's drafts have shown that children can revise successfully when given adequate time to rework a draft, input from peers and teachers, encouragement to work hard, and recognition for what they accomplish.

Footnotes

1Flower, Linda. "Revising writer-based prose" in /mmral t1f Basic Writi11g, 3.2, 1981, 62-74.

2GravL'S, Donald. Writi11g: Teachers and Childre11 al W11rk, Exeter, New Hampshire : Heinemann Educational Books, 1983

3sommers, Nilncy. "Intentions and revisions" in /mm1al llf Basic Writmg. 3 2, 1981, 41-49.

~Wall, Susan and Anthony R. Petrosky. "Freshman writers and revision· results of a survey" in /ormral of Basic Wr1ti11g, 3 2, 1981, 109-122.

5Nold, Ellen. "Revising" in Writi11g: T11e Nature, Develt>pme11t, a11d Teaclr111g crf Writtc11 C1111r1111111icatimr, vol. 2, Wrili11g: Process De· velop1m·11/ and Commr111icati1111, Hillsdale, New Jersey : Lawrence Erlebaum Associales, 1981.

6Elbow, Peter. Wrili11g Witlwul Teachers, N~w York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

7Nold, 1111. cit.

R11tlr Ca11ha111 is a Fifth arid Sixtl1 Grade Tcacllcr al Kameltamelra Elc · mc11tary Sdw1.1/. D1m11g 1984-85 sire served as tire Writirrg Rrs1111rcc Coord111alor /1clpi11g teachers to i11rnr11orate more writi11g i11s/ructi111r irrta tlleir i11str11ctw11al prngrams.