Reciprocal Revision: Making Peer Feedback Meaningful

Overview

From Theory to Practice

OVERVIEW

How do we get students to truly revise their work? Despite many lessons and emphases on the writing process approach, many students still view revision as simply checking spelling, grammar, and punctuation. This lesson is designed to help middle school students develop more constructive peer feedback on writing through the use of reciprocal teaching strategies. Instructors begin by sharing a work of art with students and discussing the artwork using four reciprocal teaching strategies—predicting, summarizing, clarifying, and questioning. By predicting, summarizing, clarifying, and questioning, students can transact not only with text from authors, but also with text written by their peers. Students then use the reciprocal teaching strategy in small groups to help them revise their written responses about a work of art. These conversational strategies can help make the revision process more constructive and meaningful for students.

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FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

Arnold, J.M., & Peterson, S. (2003). Untangling knots through talking about writing. In S. Peterson (Ed.), Untangling some knots in K–8 writing instruction (pp. 17–26). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

• Students should be given opportunities to converse about their knowledge and ideas while writing to further their writing development.
  
  
• Informal conversation among students while writing influences the number and the quality of revisions that students are willing to make.

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