How to Help your Child Edit their Work

Writing is a foundational skill that children need before heading off to high school and one they will use throughout their lives. A critical part of the writing process is editing. In my teaching, I use a strategy called CUPS to help my students check their work. CUPS stands for Capitalization, Understanding, Punctuation, and Spelling.

For K-2, I introduce each step slowly, taking one or two weeks for each. The first week, we focus on checking for capitalization in our work. The next week, we check for understanding: when we read the sentence out loud, does it make sense? Did we miss any words that need to be included? We then move on to punctuation, followed by spelling. This CUPS method comes from my IMSE training and is something I use in the classroom and with my own children at home. I have linked a video here to show how I use CUPS.

Quick tip: Have your child keep a journal throughout the summer. If they write at the beginning of the day, they can write about what they are looking forward to. If they write at the end of the day, they can reflect on the best or worst part of their day. Either way, have them finish their work by checking it with CUPS.