Overediting in first grade

Hannah's teacher is having her students edit the writing they do. I think this is, at least in part, a consequence of the many years that we spent on making sure that the kids were fluent writers. So much emphasis was placed on fluency that now the pendulum has moved to accuracy. Kids in Hannah's 1st grade class writing several paragraphs in which they have to do pre-writing in a graphic organizer that asks them to write the intro sentence and then what happened first, next finally and a conclusion sentence. When the kids turn in their writing, the teacher writes a lot of red on their papers. Then, much like we do in an academic ESL class, she gives them a handout with some "mistakes." She asks students to correct the mistakes. The problem with this handout is that there are way too many mistakes in each sentence. And there is no pattern to the mistakes. My concern is that if you are going to have your students edit their work, don't overload them with problems, and find a pattern if there is one. As I wrote in another entry, teaching goes well beyond giving out handouts and getting students to do a lot of busy work.....