Over the years I’ve made so many strides in my teaching work as result of one core belief in particular: students learn more when they’re doing the heavy lifting, and they rather enjoy it when they’re helping their peers in the process.

I’ve learned ways to put this belief to work in their writing. Today’s class centered on a peer review and feedback session using collaboratively-written sonnet analysis essays.

Students are already paired from writing the essay together, so after reviewing with them the AP Lit & Comp Poetry Analysis rubric, their task was to leave their essays open* and find the work of another pair from the room to engage with.

The rubric addresses three main categories: claim, evidence / commentary / analysis, and sophistication.

Below are our steps, which took us a period and a half. Steps 1-6 on day one, the remainder on day two.

  1. Highlight your peers’s title, and enter a comment saying hello, letting them know your name, and offering them some excitement for their work which you are about to read.

2. Read the essay in total, making no comments.

3. At the end, enter a comment indicating the lasting impression of the essay. What is standing out? What is the lasting impression?

4. Chat with your writing buddy about your comment and the essay, discussing not only how it differs from yours, but what you’re learning about the sonnet from reading your peers’ essay.

5. Starting from the beginning, make comments on the essay that help the writers see where they are executing the expectations of the rubric. Do not give scores, but rather note the parts and perhaps enter thoughts about what they’ve written.

6. Go back to your original comment on the lasting impression. Add to this, indicating what these writers did well, and how the piece moved your thinking in any way, whether about the sonnet itself and/or about the writing.

7. Head back to your essay. Read the comments. Re-read your essay. At the bottom, create a break between the essay and what you will now add as your own reflection. Write a brief reflection that addresses these points:

  • what you learned / now think about the sonnet based on your reading of your peers’ essay
  • how you felt / what you were thinking about while giving them feedback – in other words, what was this experience like for you?
  • your thoughts on your own essay – what do you love about it? what do you feel it needs? what do you wish it might have included? what areas will you focus on as we move forward in our sonnet study?

For the record, I will not “grade” these essays in a traditional sense. I will review them, look at the comments, and add any feedback I feel will help the writers move their thinking toward more nuanced interpretations, clear writing, thorough development, and sophisticated expression.

Those who worked hard and put genuine effort into their work will get full credit. I’m not completely at a no-grades-at-all type of model (which I interpret as a “full-credit for full-completion model”), but I am getting quite close. I have the pandemic to thank for that.

Ever since I started using peer review sessions like this, I’ve had writers come to me asking to revise their work, making comments in future reflections that harken back to what they learned by reading their peers’ writing. They’re just more self-directed than if I had given them tons of comments and a grade and a chance to revise.

Who could ask for more? Not this teacher.

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*The logistics: pairs collaborated in a Google Doc to write their essay. To engage in the peer review, they leave their chrome books open on their desks with the essays pulled up. They move to another section of the room to find the chrome books and essays of another pair, and they sit at those machines and enter comments on that document. Thus, the desire to introduce themselves at the start, because the comment feature will show the comments as being by the same person whose computer they’re on.