Date: Wednesday, September 2, 2016
Unit: Assignment #3
Lesson: Peer response, looking at peer’s brainstorming, outlining process, and maps to help generate ideas for the long weekend and for the more in-depth peer response session for next Wednesday.

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I think virtually all of what Professor Walton said about my time in class was accurate— I felt that my students didn’t have adequate direction for their very first peer review activity. On the previous class period, I had gone over some of the basics of what good peer review should look like, sound like, and feel like, but putting it into practice for the first time ended up being a little more awkward than I would have liked. That said, I think the day served its purpose well in that it gave the class something tangible to have in their memories when we came to look at good peer review in the next class, September the 7th. Looking back on how the class on the 7th went, I think it all ended up working in the class’ favour. My students were very willing to voice their opinions on peer review, including what they thought was good about it and what could be improved for next time.

 
So, working together, we composed a graph on the board about what could be improved for the next peer review session and what went well the first time (picture included below). In fact, due to the vivaciousness of my students at the chance to improve their peer review sessions (and their general enthusiasm for the positives of the first round on the 2nd) I think I will advocate having at least two peer review sessions for all subsequent Assignments. The first day would be focused on what the session of September the 2nd was focused on, which was the development and free exchange of ideas. The following peer review session would focus more heavily on working closely with student papers and fine-tuning at a sentence and argument level.

 
This extra injection of organization really brought the next peer review class together. Not only that, but it set a precedent for the rest of my class, which is that the class will often contribute, with my guiding them, to large master lists of ways of thinking that the whole class can benefit from. Citations, art analysis vocabulary, paper structure and flow, and good peer review have all been constructed on the board for the whole class to draw from. Not only does this mean that ideas are being tossed around the class more often and with more freedom, but it also means that the students will be held duly accountable for errors and successes, as they were part of the whole class effort. My class responded extremely well to this new style of collaboration (and, naturally, said good things about the improved peer response session and felt more confident about their papers as a result) during the Assignment #2 reflection.