Revising Process Essays
Once you finish a first draft of your process essay, set it aside for awhile. When you return to it, you can see it anew. That's what revising means—seeing your work with new eyes. When you revise, you look at your essay from your reader's perspective to make sure you have included all of the important ideas and placed them in the best structure. These activities will help you revise.
Revising to Elaborate Details
To explain something, you need to elaborate. When you elaborate, you use different types of details to explain an idea.
Step 2: Get a cage
Next, you need to get a cage for your hamster.
Detail 1: Metal cages
Metal cages let the air flow through.
Detail 2: Plastic cages
Plastic cages can have all kinds of tubes for exercise.
Detail 3: Cage features
You need a water bottle, food dish, and wheel for running.
Elaborate details.
Use the following activity to come up with new details for your essay.
- Write down a step that is not as clear as it could be.
- Write a new detail that could help explain this step.
- Write another new detail that could help explain this step.
- Write a third new detail that could help explain this step.
- Review these details. Add some to your essay if they help you explain.
Teaching Tip
Use this page to help students deepen their explanations, adding new details with additional research.
Revising to Add Headings and a Title
Write headings for your essay.
Follow these instructions to write a heading for each step. Then add the headings to your essay, before each middle paragraph.
- Write a heading on its own line before each step (middle paragraph).
- Make each heading bold.
- Capitalize the first and last words and all other words except short prepositions and a, an, and, but, or, nor, for, so, and yet.
Step 1: Shop for a Hamster
- Write a heading for step 1.
- Write a heading for step 2:
- Write a heading for step 3:
- Write headings for any other steps:
Write a title.
Try each strategy. Then add one title to your essay.
- Name the process.
How to Care for a Hamster
- Use an expression.
Fuzzy Wuzzy Wasn’t a Bear
- Be creative.
Living Teddy Bears
Revising with a Peer Response
Share your writing.
Have a trusted classmate read your essay and complete the form.
Revising in Action
When you revise, you add, delete, rewrite, and rearrange your writing to make it clearer. Here are revisions to the "Living Teddy Bears" essay.
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Paragraph Before Revisions
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A heading, new details, and a transition are added.
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Paragraph After Revisions
Revise with a checklist.
Read each line. When you can answer each question with a yes, check it off.
Developing Your Ideas
- Does the essay clearly explain an interesting process?
- Do facts, definitions, details, and examples help develop ideas?
- Does the voice effectively teach the reader how to do the process?
Structuring Your Ideas
- Does a lead hook the reader at the beginning?
- Does the beginning paragraph have a clear focus statement?
- Do middle paragraphs have topic sentences that name steps?
- Do transition words connect ideas effectively?
- Does an ending paragraph sum up the process?