Editing at Westwood

This year at Westwood one of our aims is to teach the children to become better ‘editors’ of their writing. Effectively editing a piece of work can often be a difficult skill to master. Being able to identify where you have made mistakes and know how to improve something you have already finished can be difficult. However editing a piece of writing is something that all adults do, sometimes on a daily basis depending on where they work. For this reason we believe that the children at Westwood should learn to become independent editors of their own work by the time they leave Westwood. The editing process involves children drawing upon everything they have learnt up to that given point. This can often be overwhelming for children and therefore time to reflect and prompts from teachers can often be needed. In order for children to become independent, effective editors direct teaching of this skill is needed. For this reason, at Westwood children will be taught how to edit in a variety of ways.

Children will learn to edit through short editing lessons and use these skills in editing station lessons. Throughout each half term, children will have short editing lessons where they will focus on a different editing skill such as improvement of vocabulary or removal of unnecessary description. Twice a half term, children will have the opportunity to complete some ‘deeper editing’ of a piece of writing. This will involve the children rotating around four stations, two of which they will be led by an adult, to edit sections of their writing. The aim of this is to impact on subsequent pieces of work and encourage the children to always think of ways to improve their writing to have the most impact on the intended audience.