Commenting and Suggesting in Google Docs to Coach Writing

There's a real difference between fixing a child's writing and teaching them to fix it. Google Docs has a feature for each, and most teachers use the wrong one.

Editing vs Suggesting

Top right of the toolbar, there's a pencil icon with three modes.

Editing changes the document directly. You fix the comma, the comma is fixed, and the child never knows it happened.

Suggesting proposes the change. It appears in colour with a card in the margin, and the child clicks to accept or reject it. Google's suggest edits guide covers the mechanics.

That difference is the whole thing. In suggesting mode the writing stays theirs, the child sees exactly what you'd change, and accepting it is an active choice rather than something that happened to them.

Tip: if you share a doc with comment access rather than edit access, Docs puts you in suggesting mode automatically. One less thing to remember.

Ask More Than You Tell

The instinct is to write instructions. "Add more detail here." "Fix this sentence."

Questions work better, because they leave the thinking with the writer:

• "What did it look like?" instead of "add more description"
• "How did you feel when that happened?" instead of "add feeling words"
• "I got confused here, who is 'she'?" instead of "unclear pronoun"
• "What happened next?" instead of "expand this"

That last pattern, describing your experience as a reader, is particularly effective. "I got confused here" is honest, non-judgemental, and gives the child a real reason to change something.

Three Comments, Maximum

A piece of 3rd grade writing covered in twelve comments communicates one thing: this is bad.

Whatever the comments say, that's the message received, and the child acts on none of them.

Three is about right:

1. One thing that's working. Specific, not "good job." "This opening made me want to keep reading."
2. One thing to change. The single highest-leverage fix.
3. Optionally, one question that pushes their thinking.

Everything else you noticed, keep for the next piece or the next mini-lesson. Writing improves through many small passes, not one exhaustive one.

Resolve Comments Together

The Resolve button closes a comment thread. It's tempting to have children resolve everything themselves and move on.

Don't. A resolved comment the child didn't understand is a lesson that didn't happen.

Sit with them, or do it as a two-minute conference: read the comment, talk about the change, make it, resolve it. That conversation is where the teaching is. The comment was just the invitation.

Use Comments for Peer Feedback Too

Give children comment access to a partner's piece, not edit access. Now they can respond without rewriting.

Give them two sentence starters and nothing else:

• "I liked how you..."
• "I wondered about..."

Elementary students left to comment freely produce "good job" twenty times. With those two starters they produce something genuinely useful, and the comment-only permission means nobody's work gets accidentally deleted.

Google's comments guide has the sharing detail.

Where This Fits in Teaching Writing

Suggesting mode is a revision tool. It works on writing that already exists.

The composing usually still happens on paper in elementary, especially below 3rd grade, where typing is slower than thinking. And the underlying skills, sentence structure, punctuation, handwriting, get built through direct practice rather than through feedback on a draft. Worksheets sorted by grade and skill cover that side.

Practice builds the skills. Comments coach the piece. Both, in that order.

More in Docs in elementary and Docs for young writers. 🙌