Guys, I am realizing now that I have no idea really how to grade/assess peer reviews. The check system makes no sense to me (check plus would equal an "A", but a check equals what? A "C"? A "B"?
How are you guys doing it? Are you using peer reviews as a participation grade? What are you doing if you have it factored in as a percentage? Are you using it as just a pass/fail sort of thing? Anyone? Anyone?
Hey Tanya,
ReplyDeleteI know I've talked to you a bit about this over the phone, but I thought I'd also share that a good way to really explain to them what you'd like them to do is to share examples of students' peer reviews that have been really excellent. Since I have them turn in their comments to me, I was able to assess them over the weekend and then share three with the class today. I didn't read them word for word, but I did show them how much each student wrote on the page (since a lot of people barely wrote anything) and gave specific examples of points they brought up that were particularly helpful to the writer (i.e. "The section where you discuss cooking as a kind of literacy could be better tied in with your previous section--how do cooking and reading books relate? vs. just something like "Work on transition."). Does that help?
Anne - I love the idea of sharing especially good comments with the class. Because I didn't have them turn in their drafts with comments, I wasn't able to do this, so that is a definitely flaw in my system. Ideally I wanted peer reviews to all happen electronically so that I could see a copy of everything, but that hasn't worked out in our low-tech classrooms. I will say though that so far everyone has brought some sort of written document to be reviewed and no one has been able to use the excuse that technology failed them. So, I guess there is an up side to everything.
ReplyDeleteI really struggle with the "check," "check plus," "check minus" model too. Even though I sort of use it....basically it's just a tool for me to track how much effort I feel someone put into something that I use a participation points. Check is they did what I asked them to and generally I think of it as like a B. Check plus = going above and beyond and a student who had a lot of check pluses would probably get an A for participation, even if he or she got a check minus and a few checks. Maybe this makes me sound too subjective, but I just use them as kind of quick visual representations of effort.
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