Revising Practice

1. Revising Practice • Replace boring verbs and average adjectives • Boring verbs = is, are, was, were, has, have, had, gone, went, get, got • Average adjectives = sad, mad, bad (and the rest of the ‘ad’ family), big, old, nice, fun, good…etc. • Highlight all the boring verbs and adjectives in your paper. • Add figurative language • Similes and metaphors, personification • You would not want to use hyperbole in a research paper because you want your information to sound truthful. • Highlight at least 2 sentences you can turn into figurative language on your rough draft. • Add sentence variety • Break up long sentences to have different lengths. • Find at least two long sentences in your own paper that you can add a short sentence after. Put a star at the end of that sentence.

2. Revising your paper • Change half of your boring words. • “is 350 pounds” – “grows up to 350 pounds” • “is a cool animal” – “fascinates people” • “gets its food by hunting” – “hunts its prey” • “are in the wild” –”survive in the wild” • Change at least 2 sentence to include figurative language • Add at least 2 short (2 – 4 word) sentences following your longer sentences.

3. Editing • The BIG FIVE • Complete sentences • Every sentence contains a WHO (noun/subject) and WHAT IT DOES (verb/action) • Capitalization • Beginning of sentences, places, names… • Ending punctuation • ? is for a question • . is for the end of a statement • ! is to show excitement or surprise • Commas • Separate items in a list • Separate a compound sentence (She wanted ice cream, but she was on a diet.) • Spelling • Homophones – there/they’re/their, your/you’re, weak/week, wail/whale, where/ware, right/write, too/two/to, heard/herd