Peer Editing

This past week, the end of a grading period and the end of the course, students have been preparing a movie version of a novel we have been reading in class. One thing that I wanted them to be able to do is become more aware of errors that they are making. One way to do this is to be able to recognize and correct errors in their writing.

Since this is a multiday project that they are working on, they need to be able to self-pace. I developed a form for them to complete each day. This helps them identify their successes for the day and also their plan for tomorrow.

Once the script was written, each student had to choose two peers to help them edit their script. This is not the traditional way that I have done peer edits, but I really like this. It makes them focus on the type of errors they are making, not the individual errors. They focus on tenses, vocabulary, and sentence structure.

What I really liked about this is what is shown in the photo to the left. Students really started analyzing the scripts. They started to ask great questions of the person who wrote it. They started to ask great questions of the person who analyzed their script. They started to really look at their writing and how to improve it.

I can't wait to see the final edits at the end of this week!