Transcript:
This lesson is designed to prepare freshman composition students for in-class peer review sessions. I really want to revamp this area of my classes next semester, and I think this has everything to do with my academic background, because in creative writing studies, the workshop method is not uncontested, but it’s kind of the iconic method by which we teach and learn creative writing at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and so I’m used to this creative writing peer review, AKA the workshop, being a dynamic, active space where we’re advocating for the draft in our hands and learning in real-time. I recognize that freshman composition and editing Wikipedia articles are not graduate fiction workshops, but nevertheless my experiences shape my ideals for my own classroom. I believe that peer review, even for beginners, can and must be a site of rigor and discovery. So this lesson or class exercise is designed for WRD111 as I look toward the spring, but I think it would be useful in WRD110 as well.
This lesson was inspired by two different sources, mostly one, that I consulted in the research process. One was called “3 Feedback Design Lessons” from the blog on EliReview.com, which offered a fantastic framework for building connection between and among peer reviewers, which gave me some action steps for how I might structure my peer review worksheets moving forward. Even more than that, though, this lesson is inspired by an article called “Grading what we value: A conversation for creative writing,” written by Erika Luckert and Jason McCormick in the Journal of Creative Writing Studies. It’s one of the best articles I’ve yet read about practical approaches to the grading of creative writing, which is a topic fraught with anxiety for any good creative writing teacher, and they talked about establishing certain values for the creative writing class—so in their case Professionalism, Community, Exploration, and Revision—and they asked the students to brainstorm actions they could take to live up to these class values as a group. Then the students created their own personal plan for meeting these standards, and their professors graded them on their progress toward those goals that they set. I love this, and I think it can be transposed into the composition classroom when we’re talking about peer review.
When I think of what might make for a good peer review experience or good peer reviewer, I land on terms like Thorough, Collegial, Responsive, Revision like in the article, and so I might present to the class these values. Of course, I would invite them to share any other words that come to mind for them that we could add to our list, but I like putting some terms in front of them, because it gets the momentum going from the get-go, instead of starting things off by silently waiting for someone to come up with something and raise their hand. So then they’d break off into small groups and talk about ways they might be Thorough as peer reviewers, how they might be Responsive as peer reviewers, and then we’d come back together, and each group would share ideas for each term. So I’m hoping we would come up with things like reading their peer’s draft two or three times instead of just one time, or taking the time to articulate a specific strength of the draft instead of just saying “it’s good,” or maybe to be Responsive they’re writing out a couple of bullet points about their action plan moving forward with revision. And maybe we could vote on our favorites, and those kind of become the standards by which I grade and structure their peer review activities.
The reality is that I give a completion grade from peer review, and I still intend to do that. But once we have our standards in place, I’ll build the peer review worksheets accordingly. So if we agree that Thoroughness looks like reading through the draft a few times, I might ask on the worksheet, what did you learn on the second read that you didn’t pick up on the first time? What did you most admire about your peer’s draft, or what did you learn from them? Or, once you receive your partner’s peer review notes, write a few sentences that outline the first step you intend to take in the revision process. So instead of, “Did they include all their sources? Did any parts of the draft confuse you?” Which of course just invites a quick yes or no from students, this requires them to dig deeper into the process both as giver and receiver of feedback. They’re not just reading their peer’s draft—they’re prompted to actively read and respond—and then their peer isn’t just scanning over the completed worksheet—they’re required to respond with a plan of action.
