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8th grade · English Language Arts · Unit 9 of 12

Write It Better

Voice, revising and proofreading

What your child practices

Choosing the right form and tone for an audience, using reliable sources and giving credit, building voice, acknowledging other perspectives, and revising, editing and proofreading drafts.

Maine Learning Results learning standard: Writing 2 · revising and proofreading

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Use an outline to organize ideas before you draft.
  2. Revise to add evidence and cut wordiness. Edit and proofread for errors.
  3. Match form and tone to your audience, use reliable sources and give credit.

Example: Remove the wordiness: “Due to the fact that it was raining, the game was postponed.” “Due to the fact that” uses five words. “Because” says the same thing in one. Answer: Because it was raining, the game was postponed.

Write It Better in Maine

In the Maine Learning Results, this is unit 9 of 12 in 8th grade English Language Arts, after Digital Citizens and before Precise Words & Spelling.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Maine Department of Education

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    Which revision removes the wordiness? “Due to the fact that it was raining, the game was postponed.”

    • Because of the fact that rain was falling, the game ended up being postponed.
    • Because it was raining, the game was postponed.
    • It rained and postponed.
    • The game, because of rain, postponed.

  2. Question 2

    Which edit fixes the run-on? “It was cold we wore jackets.”

    • It was cold we wore, jackets.
    • It was, cold we wore jackets.
    • It was cold, so we wore jackets.
    • It was cold we wore jackets,

  3. Question 3

    You want to share holiday news with a close friend. Which tone fits best?

    • stiff and distant
    • scientific and technical
    • friendly and casual
    • formal and legal

  4. Question 4

    Which sentence uses a precise verb?

    • The team went across the field.
    • The team moved over the field.
    • The team did a thing across the field.
    • The team sprinted across the field.

  5. Question 5

    When you revise a draft, you should mostly…

    • only change the font
    • improve the ideas, organization and clarity
    • only make it longer
    • only fix spelling

  6. Question 6

    Tap the sentences in the best order.

    • Zoe grabbed her gear and ran to the rink.
    • The alarm rang before sunrise.
    • She laced her skates and stepped onto the ice.
    • By the end of practice, her legs were shaking and she was grinning.

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