Peer Feedback
Overview
When students provide constructive feedback on each other's work, they learn to give relevant suggestions, receive specific ways to improve their writing, and engage in Metacognition. Students should have models, checklists, or rubrics of what giving feedback should look like and/or areas to focus on so that they can frame their feedback appropriately and in a safe space. During this peer review process, students also reflect on how they conveyed concepts in their writing, and when done well, peer feedback fosters Motivation to self-correct and for students to take ownership over their work.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Watch how this high school teacher introduces the ladder of feedback as a way to give feedback on a complex project. By providing a sequential framework with specific questions, sentence stems, and success criteria, she sets clear expectations for what elements to focus their feedback on, which align to their rubric, and scaffolds the process of giving positive but constructive feedback.
Design It into Your Product
Videos are chosen as examples of strategies in action. These choices are not endorsements of the products or evidence of use of research to develop the feature.
From 1:52 to 4:17 learn how Peergrade allows learners give and receive feedback effectively. Learners anonymously offer different types of feedback using a rubric set by the teacher, which allows for some objective and some open feedback questions. The feedback receivers can then go through the feedback and react to it, rating the feedback itself and offering tips for improvement. In the case of disagreement, learners can flag responses so that teachers can intervene and respond to the feedback.
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Cooperative Learning Strategies
Students practice making and finding meaning in texts through book discussions moderated by teachers to varying degrees.
When peers are able to work together to plan, draft, edit, and revise during the Composition process, their writing quality improves.
Flexible grouping is a classroom practice that temporarily places students together in given groups to work together, with the purpose of achieving a given learning goal or activity.
As students move through multimodal stations pertaining to a particular unit, the social and physical nature of the activity supports deeper understanding.
As students work with and process information by discussing, organizing, and sharing it together, they deepen their understanding.
Having students teach their knowledge, skills, and understanding to their classmates strengthens learning and increases Motivation.
When students explain to others, they deepen their understanding and gain confidence in their learning.
Bringing students' every day literacy practice of texting into the classroom provides regular, low-stakes practice communicating with authentic audiences.
Think-pair-share encourages meaningful student discussion by allowing for extra processing time and multiple shares.
Writing conferences allow students to fully immerse, share, reflect, and receive feedback during the writing process, promoting Motivation for continuing the sometimes lengthy revision process that occurs in the upper grades.
