Year 7 can spot persuasive devices in a finished text, but their own first drafts stay flat, because a finished model hides the decisions behind it. Over the week before the lesson, the teacher wrote a paragraph arguing that the library should stay open at lunch, naming a version in Google Docs each time it changed: the first draft, the version with a statistic added, the one where a rhetorical question replaced a plain statement, and so on to the eighth. In class the teacher steps through the named versions on the board, with each change highlighted in colour, explains why a word was cut or a sentence moved, and returns to earlier versions to set them beside later ones. Students watch and note three revisions in their books, each with a before, an after and the reason given. They finish by marking one sentence in their own last piece of writing that they would now change, ready for the redrafting lesson.
Tools: Google Docs Nine ideas for your own version in Generate
This page is one of a growing set of PICRAT examples by cell, subject and grade. Page maintained by Andy Perryer.