Daily Paragraph Editing Activity
Mini Lessons to Teach Spelling, Grammar, and Social Science
Daily paragraph editing can combine the social sciences with spelling and grammar.
Teaching time is limited but with a little creativity you can join a few lessons in one. Grammar and spelling are a part of a good language program, and daily paragraph editing is a great option to teach students.
The daily paragraph editing activity allows students to learn new words, grammar rules, and to reinforce language skills already taught. There are several books on the market with daily paragraph editing lessons. However, open the students’ science or social studies textbook and create your own. Teachers have limited time to teach these subjects, therefore engage them in the morning with a little knowledge that will be taught during the week.
Daily Paragraph Editing
Choose the skills you want to emphasize in your editing activity. For example, to work on spelling, choose a paragraph with new words related to the science or social studies topic. Write the paragraph with your "teacher-made" spelling errors for the new words on chart paper or overhead transparency. For some words make the spelling error obvious while for others only make a minor alteration. As well, you can include spelling words of the week, if they are a part of the paragraph. Another option is to include a sentence or two of your own with weekly spelling words.
If you are focusing on grammar, choose a grammar rule to be taught. If you want to teach about commas, pick a paragraph with several commas. To build reading comprehension, skip important words, or make the sentence incomplete and the students must make the corrections. Another option is to remove certain words from the paragraph and students must choose an appropriate word that makes sense. The teacher may or may not use a word list for the exercise.
Daily paragraph editing is a great exercise as it can be done at each individuals pace during the morning routine, and students who do not finish, can finish during the day.
Correcting Daily Paragraph Editing
- Correct at the end of the day or during a break with the class.
- Before lunch or at the end of the day, place the corrected paragraph on the board and students make the corrections with a different colored pencil. Students hand in the paragraph as their ticket to leave the classroom. It is important to check that all students are making the corrections, and completing the assignment. It takes less time to review the paragraphs that have been corrected and to notice a weakness in the class’s learning of a concept or an individual student.
- Correct during the science/social studies class. As students read the paragraph in the text book, they make changes, as the teacher highlights the corrections.
Teacher Tip
Review the students’ grammatical and spelling expectations for the year. Create an alphabetical list of all spelling words and a list of grammar rules. Use the list each time you create a daily editing paragraph. Each time you use a spelling word or grammar rule, make a check mark on the lists. As the weeks pass, the mini lessons taught will be displayed on the list and will be a great reference for making new daily paragraphs.
Student Variation
Each week, choose 5 students to create the daily paragraph based on certain criteria. Students can look at the master list of spelling and grammar expectations and create a paragraph based on these suggestions. Students must write the paragraph with and without mistakes. The teacher will review them before presented to the class and add other errors if needed.
For more teaching ideas see the Basic Pattern Sentence and How to Write a Sentence.
