Activity Showcase: Whole-Class Response with Modeling –> Pairs Peer Response (Barbara Gordon)

I do some preparation for peer response days in my class that has been successful in generating plentiful, helpful response from students, though it may be hard to do the activity in a class that does not last an hour and forty minutes. It goes like this.
I get a volunteer from class to email a draft a day before we do peer response. I make enough copies of the volunteer’s draft for the class.

I hand out and go over the response sheet, which is tailored to that assignment. (The response sheet only addresses content. We have a separate day for editing.) We talk about how to adopt the shoes of the intended audience and how to respond in writing and speech as that audience, not as a teacher. I go over a few examples of ways to, and not to, do this; this largely involves showing them the difference between using “I” statements, as opposed to “you” or “you” implied statements.

I hand out the volunteer writer’s paper and encourage students to begin writing their responses while the writer reads the paper aloud. After the paper is read aloud, there is about ten minutes of quiet while students write responses on the writer’s draft using the response sheet.

We then sit in a circle. Each student must offer one, and only one, unique content/audience response to the writer, when she or he feels moved to do so. I mention that they need to talk directly to the writer, not me. During this process, when needed, I draw students’ attention to helpful audience based responses as a way to encourage more of this kind of feedback.  I help those who have lapsed into “telling the writer what to do” revise their responses. The writer is advised to “eat like an owl,” meaning to listen to the response, then cast off what she or he believes is not going to enhance the piece. I emphasize that the writer is in charge of making any revisions and needs to make wise decisions based on the response, sometimes taking no action on certain comments.

The students are aware that we have been modeling what they will now do with a partner. Their partners are different each time. I use some kind of random assignment to mix up whom they work with; for example, when they come in the room they each get a card, and they need to find who has the counterpart of their card and work with that person (ex. The king of hearts looks for the king of spades, queen of hearts, queen of spades, etc.).

I emphasize that they read their drafts aloud to their partners and that they do not speak nor give their partners their written response until I give them the go ahead. When I do give that go  ahead, I mention how they need to talk through their responses to each other  before handing over the written comments on the draft. I encourage them together to discuss possible ways to revise and to take time answering the questions they have posed to each other. (The response sheet prompts the responder to question the writer.)  These conversations are key to the response. (BTW the volunteer/writer does not converse with class responders when we do the whole class response.)
If there is time, I ask everyone to write out what they plan to revise based on their partner’s response. That’s it in a nutshell.

Tags: peer response, writing process