How to Guide Peer Feedback Positively?

30th November 2021

Within the four walls of the classroom, the role of the peer group is as important as that of a teacher 21st-century teaching is more about collaboration and good classroom culture. Both teacher’s and peer feedback is regarded as a major key element to successful teaching and learning, it is now often used as a powerful strategy to involve students directly.

Teaching learners how to take constructive peer feedback and enabling them to form quality feedback. Classroom feedback can provide opportunities for self-improvement; it can also enhance learners' understanding of the subject matter from multiple perspectives. Certainly, it will make experience learning with more engagement, motivation, and confidence with students.

Peer feedback also creates an opportunity for the teacher to allow students to focus on self-improvement and let them take the lead for a while, which makes learners accountable and involved in the part of learning outcome. Learn how to incorporate peer feedback culture with International Teaching Diploma.

Nonetheless, it can be often challenging for the teachers to facilitate group feedback. The quality of the peer feedback highly depends on students' understanding of the subject matter. Since students prefer to value the teacher's feedback over their peers navigating peer feedback sessions needs to create a space for students to give and receive feedback positively.

3 simple ways to incorporate quality peer feedback sessions –

Model good feedback

Before you assign giving peer feedback, students need to have a sense of direction. Explain to them how feedback needs to be specific and purpose-oriented, and not necessarily critiquing. Demonstrate to them how sentences can be framed in honest and kind ways.

Use sentence starter prompt to guide learners focus on the most important aspects of the assignment and clarify prior how to deliver their feedback. Also, ensure to monitor peer feedback sessions, so you can bring them back on track if the point of relevancy starts to lack.

Encourage engagement

During peer feedback help student focus more to flow and build the conversation. It can promote engagement within the classroom. building up the conversation can mean where learners are not corrected here and there for minor mistakes such as spelling and grammar, but their focus on content is valued over all else.

Actionable feedback

While students make points of the missing dots and errors, adding different suggestions and approaches along with it can allow the listeners to think from a perspective of the practicality of the feedback. This can also prevent the peer feedback from being personally attacked.

Especially for adolescent learners, peer feedback can make them feel judged. Since research indicates adolescents can be hypersensitive to criticism helping them emphasize the areas for improvement and express their perspective which is exclusively different but has a good angle.

Takeaway

Be it teacher’s feedback or peer feedback, the purpose of practising it in the classroom is to facilitate engagement where students feel valued and empowered. The idea here is to create a niche for collaboration and a sense of comfort in receiving and giving feedback in a very goal-oriented way. It also enables frequent interactions among students; learners can build rapport and trust and healthily embrace each other’s perspectives.

Feedback is a powerful tool to use in the classroom. Peer-to-peer feedback is essentially a part of the overall learning process now. It fosters critical thinking, engagement, and motivation throughout the learning experience on the subject matter.

With practice teachers can guide students to lead peer feedback sessions, International Teaching Diploma can help educators incorporate strategies that involve collaboration and engagement. Creating such a meaningful learning environment will gradually save a lot of grading time.

Written By : Aditi Rao