mcmurryjulie / Pixabay

Lots of research shows that peer review in the classroom can be very helpful and effective – if done well.

That last part is always the tricky part.

I used a new peer review process and form with my IB Theory of Knowledge students this past year.  I wouldn’t say it was gangbusters, but it went okay.

Students first spent fifteen minutes completing the first part of this downloadable form. There, they identified concerns, questions, worries they had about writing their essay.

You’ll see in Part Two of the form where they have to write down helpful advice they received from classmates in response to their questions, and Part Three where they have to write good advice they felt they gave.

All the parts offered models and examples of advice to ask for and advice to provide.

As you can see from the anonymous survey of students afterwards, their general reaction was “meh”:

Here are some students’ comments:

It was helpful for me, because I got told that my work was good and excellent.

It was helpful to me by improving the quality of my outline. Letting me know what thing i should do and what things I shouldn’t do.

It was helpful to me because it was nice to hear feedback from them so we can work on ourselves and better ourselves.

No one really had advice or questions for anyone, I don’t think its a problem with the exercise per se but more in the students not wanting to give a lot of effort in the last few weeks of the year.

it was not that helpful I could have spent the time working on my essay instead

I think it was helpful because it helped me learn new things and perceive things differently. I think it could be better improved if everyone was more collaborative.

It was helpful to me as it helped shape my idea of how I am going to do this essay.

i enjoyed this activity because i got good feedback. I also gave advice to people as well that i hope helped them as much as it helped me.

this was very helpful for me because now  i know what I’m going to write and i have an idea of how to do it

It was helpful for me because I was able to get feedback on my work from people other than myself and my teacher(s). It allows me to reflect on future mistakes and current mistakes.

The peer review was helpful to me because it’s hard to revise your own work so it’s helpful to get input from other people’s point of view.

I’m not sure what, if anything, I’d do differently.  It sounds like some found it helpful, and others did not.