When I was in high school, I absolutely loathed peer reviewing. I was always partnered with a student who struggled to write. I would spend a half hour marking every mechanical mistake while my “partner” would glance at my paper and write a smiley face on the top.
I’m far removed from high school now, but some peer review models haven’t changed much. However, peer reviewing is an important skill in writing classes and in education in general. Here are five alternatives to the classic peer review model to transform your classroom into the writing workshop of your dreams!
Review Stations
One of my favorite ways to make peer reviewing a more active activity is to incorporate movement through stations. In my most recent stations peer review activity, my Journalism students were given a checklist of five different areas:
- Self-review
- Fact-checking
- Photos, photo captions, and photo credits
- Proofreading
- Headlines & leads
In this class, I have three students who have taken Journalism before, so they often ask as editors in class. I assigned one editor to each task and I took the fourth. Obviously, no one is needed for self-review. The students had the whole block hour to complete all five stations, seeking initials from an editor or myself once they completed a task. When they finished, they turned in their checklist for a completion grade.
Stations are a great activity for students that can handle movement and autonomy. My Journalism students are upperclassmen who often have to leave class to take pictures, check sources, and get a last minute quote. I trust them more than my underclassmen, which is why this was the perfect review activity for them!
Speed Peer Review
Speed peer reviewing is similar to speed dating. Students review a peer’s essay for a limited time (e.g., 3-5 minutes), focusing on one specific element. Some elements you could focus on include:
- Thesis statement
- Organization
- Argument
- Topic sentence
- Mechanics (or split into spelling, grammar, and punctuation for lower grades)
When the time is up, students move onto the next essay.
This type of peer reviewing creates quick, focused feedback rounds. It also avoids the classic pitfall of peer reviewing a bad essay, where you’re stuck for 30 minutes fixing simple spelling errors. If an essay has too many mistakes, they can’t all be caught in just five minutes, so students are incentivized by bringing their best drafts to get the most out of the activity.
Blind Peer Review
In a blind review, students remove their names from their essays and assign them numbers. Give students a random essay and ask them to review (using a rubric of course). When finished, they return the essay back to you with their comments or remarks. Then you pass them back to their original owner.
Blind reviewing creates anonymity, encouraging more honest and unbiased feedback. Students can focus purely on the quality of the writing without any preconceived ideas about the writer.
Reverse Peer Review
Reverse peer reviewing is a good activity for students who are inexperienced with peer reviewing. Instead of peers reviewing each other’s essays, have the student who wrote the essay explain what feedback they are looking for 1-2 specific areas (e.g., thesis, organization).
Reverse peer reviewing encourages students to reflect on their own work and ask for targeted feedback rather than general comments. It’s also a good activity for keeping peer reviewing short and focused. By picking just 1-2 areas, the peer reviewer won’t feel overwhelmed with looking at an entire essay.
Self-Review
Before peer reviewing a big research paper, I always lead students in a “guided self-review.” I know that if I ask students to proofread their essays before submitting, they won’t. (Or they’ll do it but miss way too much.) In order to catch these mistakes, I create a slideshow where I walk through common errors as a whole group. Students look through their papers as I point out expectations and common mistakes. This is a great way to catch errors in citations, formatting, and mechanics so peer reviewers can focus better on argument and organization.
