This is a fantastic tool for helping early writers learn to edit their own sentences. Teach students to draw each part of the face after they have checked their sentence for that sentence feature e.g. capital letters, end punctuation, spaces between words etc.
1. My sentence is a complete thought
2. It starts with a capital letter
3. It has end punctuation
4. There are spaces between words
5. My sentence has WOW words (or describing words)
6. My sentence has a verb.
7. I have used neat handwriting.
For Kindergarten students, I stop at the finger spaces part and then gradually introduce the last three parts once they are ready.
This resource is available with and without picture prompts, and in colour or black and white.
RELATED RESOURCES
Once students are writing more than a few sentences, they are ready for a more sophisticated editing scaffold. Feel free to check out:
TEACHING NOTES for VERBS:
Teaching students to find the verb in their sentences is a really great way for them to see whether they have included ONE complete thought.
E.g. 'I went to the park it was fun' is a common type of mistake but it has 2 verbs- 'went' and 'was'.
By identifying the verbs, students can see that they have two complete thoughts. They either need a full stop- 'I went to the park. It was fun.' or a conjunction- 'I went to the park AND it was fun.'
I have a free 'tricky verbs' poster display which you can find here: Tricky Verb posters
TEACHING NOTES FOR FINGER SPACES:
If students have remembered some finger spaces but not all, I get them to draw a straight line instead of a smile.