Peer editing

Objective You will be able to teach your students how to conduct effective peer editing conferences.

Best Practices Social: Learning is always socially constructed and often interactive; teachers need to create classroom interactions that “scaffold” learning. Collaborative: Cooperative learning activities tap the social power of learning better than competitive and individualistic approaches.

Inquiry question How does peer conferencing impact young writers? As a teacher, this was my first year to really let go of my student’s hands and let them help each other on their writing pieces and it turned out to be a great thing.

Impact on Motivation After teaching my students how to edit their writing pieces and allowing them to peer edit, I have found that the motivation for my students to write has increased. I believe that peer editing makes the students more comfortable to talk about their piece. This allows them to talk out their writing and help each other with ideas of ways to improve their writing. I have observed that this has been very effective for boys.

Step-by-step How do you train your students to be peer editors? Mini lesson Have students practice mini lesson. Turn, talk, and share. Teacher is monitoring while peer tutoring is going on. Recap of mini lesson Once students have mastered the mini lesson topic, this becomes part of their regular writing workshop.

Conference Time

My next steps One thing that I have learned from Carl Anderson in his book, How’s it Going, is to have the students make an assignment box in their notebook once you are done conferencing with them. For example, when a teacher/peer is conferencing with a their partner, have the student write down what they are supposed to do after their conference in their notebook.

My next steps Another idea from Carl Anderson that I want to try is sharing your conference with a partner. After your students have discussed how they are going to make improvements on their writing, have them tell another peer and if he should forget, he can ask his peer. I want my students to use flip cameras and recorders when they are conducting peer conferences.

Student samples