Do your students get excited about peer review workshop? Many do not. Maybe they just don’t value peer feedback. Perhaps their peers focus on grammatical mistakes, and they receive back worksheets with only check marks or one-word answers. Then try changing the position of your students from peer reviewers to peer tutors, and show them how to help each other improve as writers, rather than improve a single piece of writing. They’ll find this more rewarding, and maybe even exciting.
Peer Tutoring in 6 Steps
Peer review workshops often include handouts in which students identify elements such as thesis, evidence, and transitions. Peer tutoring is a vastly different approach: students become the tutor as well as the tutee. In either role, peer tutoring ideally facilitates easy conversations about writing, the process, and the writer, not just the single assignment at hand.
01
Warm-up talking
- Learn each other’s names
- How are they doing?
- How are they doing in this class? Other classes?
- What are they struggling with?
02
Writer’s background
- Ask about writer’s strengths and weaknesses
- Ask the writer to explain the assignment in their own words
- Give control of paper to the writer, they should write down their own notes
03
Set Goals
- HOC vs. LOC
- Organization, content, audience, and purpose (rhetorical situation)
04
Collaborate
- Read aloud
- Ask leading questions
- Active listening
- Nondirective comments
05
Revision Plan
- Organization
- Genre expectations
- Citations
- Tone, etc
06
Report Form
- Review tutorial
- Turn in for credit