Activating students as instructional resources for one another

Students send their piece of work around to others in a group and each of them provide constructive feedback for improving the work.

Students analyse the work of a peer over a period of time to provide feedback on what has improved and what still needs work. The work compared must use the same type of skills so that the student can check for improvement and provide helpful feedback.

Students exchange books and give comments to a peer by writing two positive things (stars) about the work and one thing that she ‘wishes’ the other student would do to make it better. The comments should be specific to the qualities of the work and provide clear guidance on what to do to improve.

Students identify homework questions they could not do, put them on the board, and solve them for one another. The teacher only needs to work on those problems that no-one else can solve.

Groups of students discuss what they have learned and what they still need to learn in a particular topic. Each group then decides which of these needs should be labelled as a ‘group weakness.’ Students from other groups can then help close some of their peers’ gaps in understanding before the teacher is asked for help.

Students in a small group build a composite answer by taking the best features of each of their individual answers, making them recognise strengths and weaknesses across the original individual answers. Students who did not originally understand some aspects of the question learn a lot from their peers.

Students exchange books and check each other’s work against a pre-flight checklist (a list of required components eg title page, introduction, 3 paragraph explanation, conclusion). The checklist can be prepared by the teacher or students. Some checklists will be generic whilst others may be specific to a particular assignment.

Students talk in small groups to check their understanding and then submit a group question to the teacher if no-one can answer it within the group. The questions address the areas the students do not understand or those where they want to learn more. The teacher notes themes and responds, adapting future teaching where needed.

Students exchange books and use a familiar mark scheme that helps them evaluate a peer’s work. Students provide feedback, but usually not grades or levels.

After being taught how to provide feedback, students mark a peer’s work to identify level of understanding (green=understand; amber=not sure; red=do not understand). It is important that time is allowed for students to get help with the things they do not understand.