Kirsten 0:00
You're listening to the creative teacher podcast, a show for busy teachers looking for ways to engage, inspire and make an impact in their teacher businesses. I'm Kiersten, a teacher business owner who is all about simple and actionable tips, strategies and resources that result in wins, big or small. If you're looking for that extra spark of creativity, you've come to the right place. Let's dive in together.
Hey, there, I wanted to share with you a little tidbit of how you can revise and edit as you create your resource without feeling overwhelmed. If you're creating a really hefty resource, it can be kind of daunting to have to go back and proofread and edit over and over again. And it can also be frustrating when you keep finding mistakes along the way. And it just feels like it's going to take forever. And it's so daunting. But I have a quick tip that I wanted to share with you about how you can kind of batch what you're creating, and edit along the way.
So I have a resource that I'm producing. I'm currently in the works of producing. And it's a pretty hefty Social Studies resource. We're talking like, it involves passages and questions, and finding pictures and illustrations and you know, all kinds of things. So what I've kind of been doing, as I've been creating is proofreading along the way. And I batch it by like tasks. So I'm creating this resource in like tasks. So I started off in a Google Drive document by doing research, I'm just writing the passages. And I try not to do all in one, of course, because it would take forever for me to do that. But I do, you know, maybe five to 10 passages at a time. And eventually I finished those passages.
The next part of this huge task would be to put all my passages in my PowerPoint document and have it formatted for you know, to get ready for the PDF version. And so I'm copying and pasting all of the passages that I've already written into PowerPoint from Google Drive. And I already see a variety of typos or the sentence isn't worded very well. I am guided by those, you know, helpful grammar edits, and misspelled you know, when it's underlined in red or blue, that's always helpful. And I can really look to see what I need to change. So that's just kind of what I do as I revise is, as I'm doing the next task on my list to you know, one step closer to finishing, I can kind of see what I need to change along the way. And sometimes I catch my edits. Sometimes it takes a little bit further down the pipeline until I catch my edits.
So after I'm doing the passages, the next thing I would be doing is kind of formatting it to match. You know the the units so I'm just copying I'm not doing this from scratch, I'm using a prior unit and just changing it up from one unit one to Unit Two, geography to history. So that kind of thing is you know, important in that I'm doing everything you know, all similar things are done together. The next part of it would be to, you know, I would start typing in the questions. Again, this is not something I can just knock out in one day, it does take time. But as I'm going through the questions, I'm reading the passage again, and I take another look at it. And I might see something that I might not like. And I can revise it that way.
So you kind of see how it cascades down. I'm not looking at the passages and the questions and the answer choices. All in one go. I'm looking at it, you know, a fresh start each day as I create this really hefty resource. Eventually, it'll keep going, you know, I do all the questions, I do all the answer choices.
And then eventually, I'm going to be looking at the answer key. So when I create my answer key, I always save that for the last thing. And this is kind of my final edit of looking at the resource as a heap with a fresh pair of eyes, looking at the passages and reading the questions and creating my answer key by choosing the correct answer. When I've done it this way, I've caught mistakes at every single step. Now, is this picture perfect? Is this going to be 100% foolproof of having no mistakes? Unfortunately, you know, we're human, it may not be the case, you might still publish it. And somebody is messaging you saying that there's a typo on page 72. And you know what, that's okay. But at least you are purposefully looking with fresh eyes each time as you batch, like, tasks together. So that's my little tip for if you're creating a pretty hefty resource, and you really don't want to have to go and reread every single thing in one go. Do it a little bit at a time by batching and working on like tasks as you create the resource.
Thanks for tuning in to the creative teacher podcast. If you enjoyed listening to today's episode, feel free to subscribe and leave a review. I'd love to hear your feedback. You can also find me on Instagram at the southern teach. I cannot wait for you to join me in the next episode for more tips and inspiration. Have an amazing day.
