408: For Better Student Revision, Play the Matching Game

The more time you spend writing, the more you know that revision is everything. Let me cite writing superhero John Green on this one, who discusses his drafting processin the FAQs on his website: "...I’m a big believer in revision: I almost always delete most of my first drafts (often as much as 90%). But there are many mini-drafts along the way, so it’s hard to talk about the process quantitatively. I do try to save the file with a different name each time I’ve made some dramatic changes I fear I might later regret, so that’s some measure, maybe, of how many drafts there are. The final copy of Katherines on my hard drive is called aok284; the final copy of TFiOS is called okay192." If I'm understanding John correctly, that means he wrote 284 drafts with dramatic changes for just one of his novels.

Let's let that sink in for a moment.

Let's be sure to mention that to students sometime soon.

I tried to demonstrate some of this to my students back when I was at the Bread Loaf School of English in the summers (find out more about that fabulous program here in episode 223), and teaching in the school year. I photocopied every phase of one of my major papers, from random thoughts on paper to sort-of-organized thoughts to outline to research notes to draft to draft to draft to final paper. The booklet I passed out to students literally looked like a book. I wanted them to understand that writing isn't a matter of freewheeling a draft and then cleaning it up.

Recently, I spent twenty or so hours over winter vacation (soooo much travel time) reading up on the most current best practices in writing instruction. It was a good time. There's nothing quite like reading classroom stories about integrating sensory detail at 3 a.m. over the Atlantic while the plane around you sleeps. (Yep, stop laughing. You always knew this about me. Pedagogy is my jam). A lot of it felt familiar, but there were also things that sparked new connections for me, and a few surprises, too. So today, let's tackle a huge topic together: student revision. We'll dive into the challenge and some solid solution options, and I'll hand over a curriculum booster pack to help you put it all into action.

The visual walkthrough of this episode:

Make a copy of the curriculum that goes with this episode: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TIxaV1lgaAJMZipDt6hgoPC6-Tz7wAi2P4KF2uSd_pE/copy

Sources: 

Green, John. "FAQs." John Green Books: https://www.johngreenbooks.com/where-i-get-my-ideas-inspiration-and-general-writing-stuff. Accessed January 2026.

Hillocks Jr., George. Narrative Writing: Learning a New Model for Teaching. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2006.

"How to Teach Authentic Writing in the Age of AI." Edutopia: The School of Practice Podcast. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-teach-authentic-writing-in-the-age-of-ai/id1840474338?i=1000736252749. Accessed January 2026.

"Improve Students' Evidence Analysis: Meet Mr. Skeptical." The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2025/05/improve-students-evidence-analysis-meet-mr-skeptical.html. Accessed January 2026.

MacArthur, Charles. "Evaluation and Revision" (Chapter 12). Best Practices in Writing Instruction. Ed. by Steve Graham, Charles MacArthur, and Michael Hebert. New York: Guilford Press, 2017.

Wilson, Joshua. "Assessing Writing" (Chapter 14). Best Practices in Writing Instruction. Ed. by Steve Graham, Charles MacArthur, and Michael Hebert. New York: Guilford Press, 2017.

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