Tips for Designing Peer Response Activities
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Making Peer Response Work
To increase the feedback that students receive on their writing and to help them become more critical readers of their own work, you can have students respond to their peer's drafts.
To make peer response successful, you must give students clear directions and demonstrate to them that you value this activity (otherwise they may give only bland positive comments). When designing a peer response activity, we suggest:
- requiring students to respond in writing to their peer's work.
- giving students a grade or some kind of course credit for the activity.
- discussing ways in which you incorporate peer response into your own academic writing (ex: informal paper trading or the journal peer review process)
- providing detailed, written instructions (ex: "identify 3 places which are unclear and explain why they are unclear).
- Asking students to provide a "writer's memo" with the final draft which outlines the changes they did and did not make in response to their peers (and their reasoning for these revising choices)
Organizing Peer Response to Print Drafts
In-class with homework: If students are going to be responding to print drafts, you might consider having them bring in copies of the paper the class period before you intend to complete the peer response activity. Then, students can take their peers drafts home, comment on them in writing, and come prepared to discuss the drafts at the next class. This model allows for students to respond to multiple drafts.
Entirely in-class: Alternatively, you could have pairs of students respond to and discuss their peers' writing in-class. This model is particularly useful when you're drafts are coming on a tight schedule and you don't have time to allow students to take them home.
