Peer Review Strategies Peer review is a great way to demonstrate the benefits of making one’s thinking visible, and for make students more accountable for their work. As side benefits, the process can result in cross-pollination of ideas in your classroom in ways that nothing else does. We’ve often left up work for days and note that students show increasing interest in others’ work over longer periods of time, and are more able to compare and contrast and so improve their own work when they have the ability to go back to the examples over and over. When they know that their peers will be looking at their work, they tend to take it a bit more seriously. In younger grades, students seem to benefit more from knowing that others will see their work (and so taking more care in producing it), than in what they gain from looking at others’ work. In higher grades the feedback itself becomes more precise and so more meaningful, though there is huge variation in these throughout classrooms. In this slide show are a number of strategies for ways of using Peer Review, generally written for a specific task though some are broader. As you try them in your own classroom you’ll figure out new things to add or tweak as it fits your circumstances. There are basically four major areas to consider: Purpose: Why are they doing this peer review (it might be so that they see other representations, or so that they do take their work seriously, or so that they practice how to write feedback for someone else). If you can’t article a reason for doing it, don’t. Logistics: How will students view work. Will they move around the room looking at lined up or table work? Will they exchange with another group? Will they do a jigsaw? Not only do the logistics depend on the task, but also on the need for variety as well as the time it will take. A gallery walk is much more quick and efficient, but may be less deep. It’s good for comparing just one thing, for example. Also in this category of logistics is how students are recording their feedback. Sticky tags are convenient and popular, but expensive. Scrap pieces of paper work just fine, and I’ve seen in-person comments force kids to choose their words more carefully. Also, writing directly on the board with a coded pen can be effective as well. Feedback prompt: Very important for eliciting meaningful feedback. This could be along the lines of comparing images, looking for similarities and differences, looking for specific responses to the task. You should always be clear about language you do not expect to see: anything that is non-specific, critical or harassing, or even joking. Note that younger grades need practice at this, but as with any skill, the more they engage in it the better they get and the more seriously they take it. Using terms like Peer Review lends an authenticity that they learn to respect. Follow-up: Just like all of us want to DO something with feedback we get, we need to resist the urge to move on after this task and instead allow students a chance to process it. This can be done in many ways: a dialogue about what they learned from the feedback, preceding or followed by a writing prompt for their notebooks; if appropriate, a change to revise their own work based on what they saw and feedback they received; brief reports on what groups changed based on the Review.

Questions ? Exchange your board with one other group. Study that group’s work. On a sticky tag note at least one that you think is an especially good question and why. Write at least ONE additional question in response to one of their questions (i.e., take it to another level). Figure out how to add at least one of their questions to yours, or to revise one of your questions based on what theirs. The most useful aspect of these protocols is in the prompts you devise for students to respond to, as well as having groups pay enough attention to others’ ideas to see what’s good and incorporate those into their own work. The former of these is in reach of younger students, where as incorporating others’ ideas becomes possible in later grades. Do what works with your students. To show students what a ‘deeper’ question looks like, you will likely need to model how to do that. Introducing just a few examples, such as ‘why don’t plants have to eat,’ to ‘why do they need sunlight,’ to ‘what do they do with sunlight.’ (not necessarily in that order). As we’ve worked with these prompts, we’ve discovered that younger students find it easier to identify good work and say why it is good, than to identify not-to-good work (at all) or say why it’s not as strong. Work up to the latter analysis depending on your students and their levels.

Explanations: Peer Exchange5666666666666621000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000011241121111111111111111111111111ZZZZZZZZZZ65555555555555555555555555555555555984 Explanation Evaluation Rotate to another group to evaluate their explanation. Comment, using one sticky tag per group, on What makes sense to you in their explanation? What needs clarifying in their explanation? Are you persuaded by their response, and why or why not? Revise your own board from the comments you received The key to each of these peer reviews is really in focusing one group’s attention on someone else’s work and critically evaluating it against some kind of rubric (i.e., the prompts you provide). Consider playing with those prompts, and finding focuses that engage your own students in the process. We tend to allow for all open-ended responses at the beginning, but then engage the students in dialogue about how useful feedback such as ‘I like this,’ or, ‘they used good colors,’ really is, and how meaningful it is for learning.

Model Musings Pass your model to one or more groups, according to your teacher’s instructions. Use up to four sticky notes to provide the following feedback: Ask for clarification of ideas Build on and add ideas Agree with and praise ideas Comment on how well thinking is made visible When finished with the rotations, return to your own board and discuss the clarity and usefulness of the feedback you received, and use what you can. Have a class conversation about the usefulness of the evaluation, as well as of the feedback groups received. Brainstorm ways for improving the feedback. As students become more familiar and comfortable with forms of peer review, you can begin to ask for their ideas of what they should look at, and even for strategies on how to provide that feedback logistically. These prompts came from 5th graders. Some groups thought their should be four prompts or ideas for responding, so each of the four group members could respond to one. Other groups decided that each person would give feedback on each idea. Their involvement in the ‘how’ part created more engagement and made the whole activity more meaningful. It also created more seriousness around both the feedback and what to do with it, so the end products were far deeper and more thoughtful than they would have been.

Gallery Walk After completing work, situate it so that people can see it. Look at all the products, then choose three to focus on. You might be drawn to ones that seem to be complex, or extra clear, or missing the mark. Write a sticky tag that says WHY you focused on this one, what you particularly think works, and any suggestions you have for helping that group make their thinking more visible. Have a class discussion about similarities and differences in models, as well as questions people have about what others are thinking. Make suggestions about the steps in investigations or research. Gallery walks can take a variety of forms. Dry erase boards can be laid out on desks, set up on chairs, or against walls. Chart paper can be taped to walls. It is useful to use larger surfaces (such as large dry erase boards) for these kinds of tasks, so that they’re easier for everyone to see. When students have tried to work out their sets of ideas about how something works, it is often an opportune time to point out that while people (scientists included) may represent those ideas in different ways, their understandings (models) for pieces fit together in the natural world really will align. This fact, that the natural world is predictable and does follow natural laws that we humans can decipher underlies the premise that there can be coherence and consistency in the world of science, and is why consensus about a particular model is so important and meaningful among scientists.