Date: Wednesday, September 28th, 2016
Unit: Assignment #3
Lesson: Peer response, looking closely at peer’s papers before the submission date of Friday, September the 30th, 2016.
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Interestingly, a colleague of mine also came to observe on another peer review day. As per usual on days like that, I spoke briefly with the class (before I put them into their groups, which I organized so that there were not students speaking about the same topic in any group) about the master list we are slowly compiling as a class about what it means to do helpful group discussions. Namely, I made sure to go over the idea that digging deeply and daring to be wrong (or, put more diplomatically, “daring to toss around alternate ideas”). After that, the groups were sorted and the peer review began.
As per usual with my peer review sessions, I have guiding questions up on the projector, they are usually ones that the students wouldn’t have thought of themselves, meaning they’re a little more probing than usual. What followed was a completely typical day of in-depth peer response. Since the peer review session (which I included as an example lesson plan) on September 7th, 2016 I have been using a standardized version of peer review in which I will circulate around the class after having set the questions up on the board. I would orbit from group to group, talking with the students to spur conversation, answer (and ask) questions, and direct students to the board to address some of the questions I had written (especially if they believed they had “done everything” already).
Logan’s response to the lesson was illuminating, to say the least. He, in our conversation afterwards, praised my ability to begin the class by using visuals to help steer the class to think about their papers in a new way. For instance, I drew a continuous straight line to represent a good, flowing paper with strong transitions. I used another, similar line to represent a broken-up and imperfectly-transitioning paper by positioning vertical lines periodically throughout said line. My class has always responded well to visual cues and visual learning before and after that class, so using it to personify something complex like good organization was praised. My constant orbiting around the class, asking how the groups were doing, and giving the new questions to consider about their papers, was also praised.
However, Logan also pointed out that I was doing much of the leg work, perhaps literally, to keep my students engaged and talking. In other words, I need to really push my students to value their own opinions and interpretations— and while, for the most part via my own observations, I find my students really trying to help each other during group work, I want to ensure that everybody in the class, no matter their groups or the Assignment, feels confident enough to speak up. Since working on Assignment #4, in which I’ve been pushing the value of being ‘incorrect,’ or having different interpretations of something subjective as someone else, is just as valid as trying to find the “right” answer. When participating in large, class-wide discussions, my students are only too-eager to contribute, but I think, without my guiding questions, lesson plan, and ‘legwork’ to give them assurances that their ideas are correct, they seem hesitant to reveal/talk about them.
The last thing I mentioned in class, as a wrap-up, was a brief note on the importance of citations, how to construct a good Works Cited page, and the like. However, and this may come equally from my distinct lack of an “outside voice” as much as from my attempt to wedge something extra in at the end of class, but I feel that my students were already packing up and leaving by the time halfway through what I was saying. On the other hand, my students (largely) did well in their citations in Assignment #3, so perhaps they did pick up on what I was saying after all. Regardless, I’d much rather not have that doubt at all going forward and learn to command (but doing so sparingly, of course) as well as I can connect with my students.