Sample Practice: Level 5
Level 5: Advanced Solo Editing teaches your kid to do deep self-editing—of their ideas and the word art of their own multi-paragraph texts. We begin teaching kids about editing in Level 1: Complex Sentences and help your child build additional layers to the skill over the subsequent levels. Most adults and kids think of editing as the process of correcting grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc. (aka, line editing). Line editing is crucial, but it’s only one part of the editing process. In Level 5, we also teach kids to edit the content of their ideas, and to do it before they focus on line editing. Is their argument sound? Can it be strengthened? How? We build up to this self-analysis skill over the previous levels because asking kids (or adults) to scrutinize their thought processes is a Big Brain Leap—and can provoke strong emotions. It’s much easier to think critically about other people’s writing and claims than our own.
Practice 5.4.4 uses the Believing and Doubting Games framework to help kids re-examine their first drafts in fine detail. We’ve watched many kids go through this process and seen what a transformative experience it is for their developing minds. For most, it’s the first time they’ve ever had to step back from their claims and look at them with a critical eye—and it may be one of the only times they’re asked to do this work until they’re in advanced schooling or the adult world. Mastering Practice 5.4.4 would not be possible without the foundational skills they’ve developed in our earlier levels around audience, idea connection webs, and critical analysis of other people’s texts. We take your child’s ideas seriously from day one because they need to take their own ideas seriously in order to be ready for this sort of critical analysis. Your child has to be able to notice and value the concept of ideas and arguments; otherwise, their only framework for processing claims is belief or disbelief, even if they’re the kind of kid who likes to ask, “why?”. That is a brittle mindset that won’t serve them well in their careers and life.
Instructions: Level 5 is a series of opportunities for your child to write original first drafts based on fun prompts and then go through both the content editing process and the line editing process (and more). The prompt for the first draft of this text was: “Congratulations, you’re starting a new business! You have an exciting idea and a plan for how to turn a profit (aka, make more money than you spend), and now all you need is to raise money from investors to help you get your business off the ground. Please write a business pitch that you can share with potential investors. In your pitch, you should explain your idea and why people should support you. Your investors will want to understand the concept, how you plan to make a profit and pay them back, how long it’ll take to return their investment, how much money you need from them to launch your business, and why.” We offer a wide variety of fun writing genre prompts in Level 5 to help your child practice how to adapt their writing to different genres.
Rhetorical tools: June Writers teaches kids to use the Believing and Doubting Games in Level 3—on other people’s texts. Our version of these excellent teaching tools includes a sub-analysis using the core tools of classical rhetoric, which we teach in Levels 2 and 3. If you want your child to begin our program at Level 5, but they aren’t yet familiar with these tools, we will seed their Activity feed with relevant lessons from Level 3 so they can get up to speed.
Tailored Feedback: June Writers gives feedback on the content and mechanics of your child’s work on every practice. Within 24 hours, your child will see tailored feedback and, in Level 5, a request to edit their work using this feedback. It’s through this back and forth that your child learns to refine their thinking and writing mechanics.
Difficult Questions: The above questions are—sadly—rare to hear in most schools. But they are crucial for your child’s ability to become a critical thinker and not just a skeptic. Critical thinkers are the innovators of the future; we can’t wait to see what your child creates!
A Sense of Accomplishment: June Writers is committed to practices that don’t rest on busy work. Instead, we design our lessons and practices to ensure that your child has a sense of accomplishment at the end of practice sequences. Practice 5.4.4 is part of a sequence within Level 5 that begins with drafting, moves through content editing, and ends with refining the words and flow of the mechanics of their writing for maximum impact. Your child will feel an enormous sense of accomplishment having poured the full power of their brain into this text. We love to see it!
Ready for your child to learn how to edit both the content and word power of their ideas at a deep level? Sign them up for June Writers Academy today!
