Virginia SOL 5.W.3.B
The Standard
Self-and peer-edit the writing for capitalization, spelling, punctuation, sentence structures, paragraphing, and Standard English (See Language Usage for grade level expectations).
Virginia Standards of Learning for English
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students reread their own drafts and a classmate’s draft to find errors that distract or confuse readers. They use a checklist and reference tools to make corrections without changing the writer’s intended meaning.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students independently catch most grade-level errors and make accurate corrections. Their peer feedback identifies the exact problem, suggests a fix, and keeps the writer’s meaning intact.
Common Misconceptions
- Students often revise ideas when asked to edit conventions. They may trust spell-check to catch homophones or treat every peer suggestion as correct. Some rewrite a partner’s voice instead of fixing clear errors.
How to Assess It
- Have students write four sentences, self-edit in blue, then exchange papers and peer-edit in green. Check whether both sets of edits are accurate and preserve meaning.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs a flawed paragraph, colored pencils, and an editing checklist, then have them mark and correct each error together.
Ask students to explain which peer suggestion improved clarity and which suggestion they rejected, using evidence from their draft.
Run an editing relay where teams correct one sentence card at a time and explain each change before earning the next card.
Have students edit a school announcement for publication, checking names, dates, sentence boundaries, spelling, and paragraph breaks.
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