Rainbow Edit (Giveaway ends in 3 days)

I went over my to do list last night - you know all those things for school that I really need to prep before the craziness of setting up a classroom starts to happen...  Well, this was something that I used last year and I wanted to modify the whole page paper that was in their binders, to a 1/2 sheet that they could glue inside their writing folder. (I use a writing folder to hold all the bits and pieces of their essay until it is completed.)  I saw the inspiration for a Rainbow Edit on Pinterest, but thought I needed to change it to fit the multi-paragraph essays that my kids learn to write.  Anyhow, here is the document if you want it.  I still haven't learned how to show a smaller picture of the document on here, so I copy/pasted it so you could see what it looks like.  The font is LD Elementary - in case it doesn't come out the same way if you decide to download it.

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Rainbow Edit:

Every paragraph should be a RAINBOW

after you check it over!

Red – Capitals – all capitals!  Beginning of sentences and proper nouns

Orange – Periods or end punctuation marks

Yellow – Indent – highlight the blank spot at the front of EACH paragraph

Green – Topic Sentence – underline it

Blue – Details – add more adjectives, add more information – where do you want to add more?

Purple – Check your spelling.  Any words you aren’t sure about?  Look it up using spell check on the computer or ask a neighbor to help.

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It's pretty self explanatory - it has to be for 4th graders.  Basically last year I was fed up with kids saying they did the editing process, when really they didn't.  This system made them check each paragraph and color code it (which they loved).  When they finished editing, they would show me, and it turned into a quick glance to see that they really did check things over before the final draft.  In my classroom I only grade the final drafts, so the quick glance was my way of making sure they were reminded to do their best before the official grade.  

As for using spell check on the computers... well, I wanted my students to show independence instead of asking me to spell words - not the words that they should know how to spell, but the longer vocabulary/synonym type words that they were expanding their horizons with.  I just pulled up a word document on the student computers, and they typed it in.  It did the normal things that we associate with spell check - a red line if it's spelled incorrectly, and I taught them to right click on the word to get different spelling options.  They then had to figure out the correct spelling and write that word on a separate paper in their writing folders.  The correctly spelled words stayed on that word document for the entire writing time, so students could see the other words and gather ideas.  Their word lists became longer, and I was a happy camper conferencing with students instead of spelling words.   

Hope this helps someone out there.