Dong Yang^*, Ma Jun

Primary School Affiliated to Southwest University

Abstract：

Primary-school writing instruction often gives children rules such as "identify a trait", "choose an event", and "add details", but compliance does not necessarily show understanding of their relationships. This article presents a focal case from a Grade 3 class taught by the first author in China. After discussion helped one student organise a list-like description around the trait "funny", the selected facts still showed only that the classmate was distinctive. In the first focal revision, peer discussion prompted the student to select relevant events; in the second, comparison with an anonymous peer text prompted her to add purposeful action, voice, expression, and reader reaction. The case operationalises conceptual understanding through evidential relevance and evidential sufficiency. It suggests that students should test the trait–evidence relationship before elaborating it. The evidence is illustrative rather than causal, but it shows how successive drafts can make relational judgement visible.

Key Words：

conceptual understanding; primary-school writing; revision; peer feedback; evidential relevance; evidential sufficiency