Editing and Revising Sentences: Fishing for Punctuation

Have you ever heard about the Revising and Editing Strategies called ARMS and CUPS? The 4th grade department at my school uses this strategy during their Writer’s Workshop. I decided to create anchor charts for my small group area so that we can refer to it throughout our lessons. Of course, I just had to share with you!

Editing with Cups

First, here is a little look at the editing chart. Students use the CUPS strategy to edit their papers for capitalization, usage, punctuation, and spelling.

Revising with ARMS

Next, here is the chart that students use for revising. Students use this chart when revising to add, remove, move, and/or substitute. Using these two acronyms helps students differentiate between editing and revising. Every time we look at 4th grade editing/revising questions, we refer back to these charts to decide if the question is asking us to revise or edit.

Fishing For Punctuation

Now, let’s look at an activity that my students did to edit for punctuation. I have these little fish above my posters for students to reference when they are looking at the punctuation in a sentence.

Easy Fishing Rods & Fish Sentences

Here’s how the activity works. Students create a fishing rod out of a popsicle stick, piece of yarn, and magnet. Then, you place paperclips on the sentences that you want your students to go fishing for. This allows the magnet to pick up the sentence.

How to Play

Students use their fishing rod to choose a sentence to edit. If the fish are laminated, students can use an expo marker to edit the sentences. You could also have students write the sentences correctly on notebook paper. Once complete, they throw the fish back and fish again!

Extending the Activity

To take it a bit further, I had students then create their own sentences with missing punctuation on notecards. Students added a paperclip and put the fish in our sentence pond. Afterwards, students were able to fish for each other’s sentences.

This could easily be done with any subject or skill. Just get you some notecards, paperclips, popsicles, yarn, and magnets! Your students could go fishing for math problems, vocabulary words, sight words, character traits, or more! This specific activity and the fishing for punctuation cards are a part of our Write On! End of the Year unit.