Having students share their writing with each other is a central practice of writing courses. The process builds classroom community; allows students to practice writing for a real, live audiences; and, teaches them to become more careful readers of their own writing. This page contains lots of ideas about modes of peer review and, at the very end, many samples and examples.
Exchanging drafts with classmates
The the most traditional notion of peer review. Students will come to class with a draft. share it with one or more peers, receive feedback, and use the feedback to inform their revisions. Drafts can be exchanged digitally through google docs (track changes) or on Moodle forums as well as printed. Instructors should guide students toward providing specific feedback — both descriptive (what does the essay say and where) as well as evaluative (does the essay work for you as a reader) — by giving specific directions or even a rubric.
After the exercise, students should engage with the feedback they received. If their work was read by two or more peers, for example, they might reflect on areas of agreement and disagreement among their readers. Alternatively, they might simply sit down with their peer reviewer and talk about their plan moving forward. They might also write a reply to their reviewer, beginning the work of clarifying their purpose and argument to their reader.
Some example directions for peer review include:
- What part of the essay did you enjoy the most? What worked well in this part of the essay? Why?
- What part of the essay were you most confused? What information do you need to better understand your peer’s argument?
- What is your peer’s argument? Underline moments in the essay when this argument becomes clear to you. Put the argument in your own words at the end of the essay. How does your peer make this argument? What evidence do they use to advance their claim? Are you persuaded by this use of evidence? Why/not?
- Highlight moments in the essay where you peer uses evidence. Look closely at these sections, do they (1) clarify where this evidence comes from? (2) analyze their evidence? (3) explain how the evidence advances their claim? OR do they use textual evidence as a summary technique rather than as a means of analysis and argument building? How might your peer revise sections where they use textual evidence to develop their argumentation?
Assembly Line Activity
In this activity, the instructor identifies the distinct cognitive tasks of an assignment and divvies them up among students or groups of students. For instance, they may be asked to summarize an argument; identify a piece of evidence; respond to a specific element in the class reading; bring multiple texts together and explain their relationship; or make a claim based on one or more readings or personal experiences.
The goal of this exercise is to help students recognize the many stages involved in writing a paper, practice their skills with one such stage, and produce a lot of feedback in a relatively short amount of time.
Peer Review Prep: For many students, doing peer review is a new and intimidating task. Devoting some class time or a homework assignment to practicing peer review on a published piece of writing can help students recognize that they do, in fact, have the skills to do this work well.
Color Coding asks students to see their peers’ writing rather than evaluate it. Students are asked to identify specific elements of a paper, for example claim, evidence, interpretation, analysis, or explanation. Looking together at the color-coded draft, the students can reflect on possible revisions, like re-considering the balance and arrangement of its elements. Quite often, this exercise leads to a lot of questions. Students realize they don’t know what analysis means or what it looks like in writing.
Reverse Outlines provide descriptive feedback to students, showing them what their essay says where. Though there are a number of ways to produce a reverse outline, one fruitful strategy is to ask students to create a new document divided into two columns: “what is being communicated/content” and “why is it being said/purpose.” Starting with the last paragraph of the essay, students fill in the “what” column. Then they read from the start and fill out the “why” column.
Brainstorming Together can be as simply as asking the class to discuss possible topics for the next paper. For example, for a research paper you might ask: (1) What are some of the research topics you’ve covered in class? (2) What are some of the research questions course materials have taken up? (3) What are some topics you’ve discussed but would like to learn more about? Each group and put up answers on the board and add to at least one other idea by extending it, posing a question, or bringing up a different source that might complicate the one written on the board.
Notecards and Sticky Notes can be used to help students get off the computer screen and truly re-vision their draft. Either the author of a draft or a peer transfers the main points of each paragraph onto notecards, (re-)arranges them, and adds sticky notes that either (provide transition sentences between cards or (2) explain the logic behind their arrangement. Finally the student narrates the visual of their essay as they lay the cards in turn on the table. Peers can test out different arrangements of ideas by moving notecards around and creating/discarding sticky notes as needed.
Excel sheet comment tracker
Either the instructor or the students create an excel spreadsheet with each column referring to a specific reading task. For example: column 1 states an evaluative comment such as “thesis needs to be clearer”; column 2 cites a specific moment in the essay where this revision is needed, i.e. “page 2, paragraph 3 of original”; column 3 offers TWO ways to revise the passage or includes directive comments such as “I think the verb can be different and more precise given that your sentence says….”). This exercise pairs evaluative judgements with specific citations and plans for revision, which moves students away from responding simply “this is good” and towards specific and constructive criticism.
Pass Around In this exercise, which is especially helpful at the brainstorming stage, each student writes their topic at the top of a sheet of paper. The instructor collects and redistributes the papers. Next, each student reads the topic and writes down another topic that is either a “smaller” aspect of the topic or a “larger” one, either narrowing or expanding the topic’s scope. Once finished, they fold down the paper to hide their contribution and pass it two times to the left. This step is repeated a few times, then students are asked to review their responses and reflect on the following: Given the feedback you received, what direction do you want to take to make your topic as clear and precise as possible? What feedback did you receive to make you want to make these changes? Revise your topic into a research question.
Class Generated Rubric Students to work in small groups to construct a grading rubric for an assignment or a revision, usually fairly late in the semester. The instructor sets the parameters: the rubrics must address the specific cognitive/learning goals of the assignment and identify features of writing of this type. After the groups come up with their rubrics, they share them and the class tries to construct ONE rubric. This requires students to make appeals, provide evidence (perhaps anecdotes about feedback received on previous papers), connect ideas, and be persuasive. Once the class arrives at a final rubric, they can exchange papers and comment based on the rubric. **This activity can also be used to construct questions for peer review.
Voting This exercise works best with short pieces of writing (even writing produced in class). Students put their writing around the room, with or without their names. Then they go around the room and vote for (1) the piece of writing they find the most persuasive and (2) the piece of writing they find the most interesting. When the voting is complete, scores are tallied and the winning pieces are read aloud. The class can then reflect on what made each piece the winner. What made the writing persuasive? What made the writing interesting? What writing techniques were used? Students can, finally, take five minutes to reflect on what they could do differently in their writing given this experience.
***
Sample Peer Review Lesson Plans and Assignment Descriptions
Untitled-document-4Letters to Peers to Guide Discussion
Biophysics-Peer-Review-WorkshopBiophysics Peer Review Workshop for a Literature Review
Topic Development, Group Brainstorm and Assembly Line Activity
Untitled-document-2Color Coding and Developing Ideas
Untitled-document-3All Day Peer Review