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Peer Review

Grades: All
Estimated Duration: 30+ minutes

Table of Contents

Analyzing, Applying, Evaluating
Check for understanding, Collaboration, Discussion, Reflection, Writing process
Any
pair
Optional

Description

Peer review is an active learning strategy where students review, assess, and provide constructive, actionable feedback to each other. Peer review can be implemented in a variety of ways such as using a structured feedback form or rubrics, annotating documents, providing verbal feedback, or using online tools. Regardless of how peer review is implemented, teachers must train and coach students on how to evaluate each other’s work effectively, including how to communicate feedback. Students also need to be trained on how to accept criticism, reject suggestions, and justify ideas. When incorporating peer review into the learning process, it is important for teachers to align the review with learning objectives, clarify assessment criteria, and adequately plan for the peer review process, including time for students to apply the feedback and reflect on the process.

When To Use It

As a learning strategy, use peer review when you want students to:

  • practice giving and receiving constructive feedback
  • deepen their understanding of knowledge and skills by evaluating exemplary and non-exemplary work
  • apply knowledge and skills by evaluating their peers’ work
  • practice making cohesive arguments to justify their feedback and their work

As an instructional strategy, use peer review when you want to:

  • facilitate social interaction and collaborative learning
  • engage students in active learning by evaluating their peers’ presentations, reports, projects, essays, and other work products
  • assess students’ understanding and application of knowledge and skills
  • teach students how to give and receive constructive feedback

How To Use It

Advance Prep

  1. Incorporate the peer review process when you plan assignments or projects, and ensure that there is time for students to reflect on the process and make revisions based on the feedback.
  2. Prepare a peer review rubric or evaluation guidelines for the peer review. Ensure that the rubric is aligned with the learning objectives. You may wish to incorporate student voice by developing the peer review rubric, guidelines, or a checklist along with the students. Have them suggest criteria or questions to answer as reviewers.
  3. Prepare to model the peer review process with students using a sample assignment and evaluation criteria. Prepare examples and non-examples of constructive, actionable feedback to evaluate with students.
  4. Students will need explicit training, practice, and coaching on how to give and receive constructive feedback before they become comfortable and effective. Plan to scaffold the process by including sentence starters to direct the feedback and encourage more thoughtful responses. For example, “when you wrote…it made me think about… because… Consider… [specific suggestion].” Highlight these key components of effective feedback:
    1. Describes the work, without judging it
    2. Relevant
    3. Concise
    4. References criteria
    5. Focuses on the work, not the person
    6. Positive (strengths and criticism phrased positively and kindly)
    7. Clear
    8. Specific, but not too directive
    9. Actionable (give suggestions for improvement with enough information to act on)
      *One rule of thumb for giving feedback is to share at least one thing the student did well based on the criteria and one specific suggestion for improvement.
  5. Students also need to be trained on how to accept criticism, reject suggestions, and justify ideas. Plan to model these behaviors with students as well.
  6. Plan for time to moderate the peer review process to ensure that students are not misled and to validate any rejected suggestions before they begin making revisions.
  7. Determine how you will pair students for peer review. Consider which students might work well together, or have students conduct anonymous peer reviews by removing the names from assignments. Anonymous peer reviews can yield more honest and substantive feedback. Some students are more comfortable giving and receiving feedback anonymously.
  8. Decide how you would like students to provide feedback. There are a number of digital tools to help facilitate the peer review process or students may provide written feedback on an evaluation sheet or rubric, sticky notes, annotations or comments on the document, etc.

Implementation

  1. Introduce students to the peer review process and the evaluation criteria, or collaborate with students on the development of a peer review rubric.
  2. After students have completed a draft of their assignments, assign each student an assignment to review.
  3. Moderate the process by checking some of the feedback and coaching as needed.
  4. Have students return feedback to their peers and allow students time to reflect on the feedback and plan revisions. If students are unclear or disagree with some of the suggestions, you may want to conference with them to understand their rationale and to help clarify comments.
  5. Have students make revisions based on the feedback. You may wish to have a second peer review session with the same reviewers and another round of revisions before students submit their final assignment.
  6. Allow students time to reflect on the peer review process. You might ask students how reviewing their peers’ work helped them to improve the quality of their own work or whether they were inspired or surprised by other perspectives.

Pros

  • Helps to develop critical thinking, meta-cognition, and self-reflection
  • Promotes deep understanding and active learning
  • Provides opportunities for students to apply knowledge and skills
  • Fosters communication and collaboration skills
  • Promotes motivation, self-confidence, and empathy

Cons

  • Students need to be explicitly trained and coached on how to provide and accept feedback
  • Some students may be reluctant to share their work with classmates and give critical feedback to their peers
  • Peer review can add more time to the learning process, as time needs to be allotted for the peer review process and teacher moderation.
  • Peer feedback can be inaccurate and misleading

Culturally Responsive Application

The peer review process leverages several aspects of culturally responsive teaching. It fosters student voice and choice when students co-design the peer review rubric or evaluation criteria. Student voice is at the core of peer review because they provide feedback using their own words and perspectives. They are also empowered to reject suggestions and justify their choices. Peer feedback offers an alternative method of formative assessment for diverse learners and provides individualized feedback based on each student’s strengths and areas for improvement. When students are taught how to give feedback and respond to it, teachers have an opportunity to address cultural sensitivities. Cultural sensitivities and individual perspectives may also be addressed when students reflect on the peer review process. Peer review offers an opportunity for all students to share, discuss, disagree, and think individually, which is an important aspect of culturally responsive teaching.

Emerging English Language Support

Involves establishing a shared set of evaluation criteria and expectations before peer review, supporting ELLs in their formulation and articulation of feedback during peer review, and helping ELLs reflect on the peer feedback they received after peer review.

Students with Disabilities Support

Since peers are kinder and attentive to special needs friends during peer review, children become more open to learning and change

Subjects

1.3 Reading foundational skills, 1.4 Writing, 1.5 Speaking and listening, 1.6 Language, 1.9 Writing in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects, 2.1 K-8 mathematics, 2.2 High school number & quantity, 2.3 High school algebra, 2.4 High school functions, 2.5 High school geometry, 2.6 High school statistics & probability, 3.1 Earth and space science, 3.2 Life science, 3.3 Physical science, 3.4 Engineering, technology, and application of science, 4.1 Civics, 4.2 Economics, 4.3 Geography, 4.4 History, 5.1 Computing systems, 5.2 Networks & the internet, 5.3 Data & analysis, 5.4 Algorithms & programming, 5.5 Impacts of computing

Why It Works

Studies have shown that peer review leads to improvements in students’ writing and increased understanding of expectations and genres of academic writing. (MacArthur, 2007) Peer feedback can stimulate the development in domain-specific skills (REF24). Larger writing improvements was noticed for students engaged in peer feedback than for students engaged in self-assessment (REF25). Peer review can expose students to an array of alternative approaches, ideas and writing styles, which may have more impact than having one model answer (REF26). The act of providing peer feedback also requires students to actively (re)consider the assignment criteria, which may improve their own subsequent writing performance (REF27). Engaging in peer feedback appears to improve students writing more than engaging in no feedback at all. (REF28).

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