Writing to Inform: Step 6

Writing to Inform: Revise

By Savannah Arnhart

Ideas and Elaboration

As you revise, use your informational Writing Checklist to check your writing. Work through the checklist, one line at a time. Reread the related parts of your article to decide whether you did your best possible work for each trait described. In this step, you will check your article for three of the traits in the categories of Ideas and Elaboration.

The Mentor Test writer, Sung-Ki Yu, used the same checklist to evaluate his draft.

Read his Think Aloud to see how he checks his essay.

Modeled Instruction

Read the excerpt below from Beau's draft of th assignment. Then complete the activities. Use the Hints for help.

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Guided Practice

Open Ended

Beau does not clearly state his topic in his first paragraph. Write a sentence that he could add to the end of the first paragraph to make his topic clear.

Hint: Your assignment clearly states what the article should be about.

Open Ended

The main idea of Beau's second paragraph is how hydroelectric power plants work. Does he include enough facts, details, and examples so that his readers clearly understand this idea? Explain your answer.

Hint: Imagine you haven't read the sources and don't know how a dam works. What information is missing from Beau's description?

Open Ended

Are all Beau's details related to his topic? Explain your answer.

Hint: Do any details seem out of place? Or do they all seem to fit?