Part four of five:
Peer review has helped me immensely throughout this course. At first I dreaded the peer review section, thinking that the students wouldn’t be engaged enough or maybe the advice would be obvious to meet a grade requirement. To my surprise, the feedback I received was incredibly helpful. My peers truly worked hard at analyzing and improving the scope of the essay. They would find things wrong in my structure or argument, while still making suggestions to develop a stronger paper altogether. We would always highlight the thesis, or claim sentence, so the reader knew what the writer was trying to portray. It also helped us as students become teacher, giving each other feedback and looking back to the rubric for a concrete relationship to the text. Another helpful part of the peer review was asking thought-provoking questions. It always helped when looking for that missing piece to the paper to engage in a question our peers asked, it usually helped alleviate a lot of confusion. Questions are a great way to avoid being antagonistic or judgemental, while still encouraging a stronger paper. As you can see on my peers draft that I marked up, I try to nudge my peer in the right direction by making subtle suggestions. I read the essay with their thesis in the back of my mind, making suggestions as I go. Peer review has been incredibly useful and I look forward to using it in the future.
