Peer Conferencing

I really enjoyed the opportunity to have peers read my narrative story and give feedback. I also liked being able to help someone else in the process of developing their own story. However, I am not best person to call for editing purposes. I feel kind of bad for the person whose narrative I had to edit. With that said, I really liked the opportunity to get feedback from peers. I liked being able to get multiple perspectives instead of just one. However, a conflict I see, especially with editing, your help is only as strong as the helper. So as I said before I am not the best person to ask for editing advice, so some peers might get great editing advice while others get less than great editing advice depending on who they are paired with. I think the peer conferencing for content can be wonderful with younger students. I also think peer editing gives young students the opportunity to practice their grammar skills, but as far as the writer is concerned, seeking editing advice from the same young peers is probably not the best strategy.

I do not remember participating in peer conferencing during the Elementary years, but I do remember several times during the Middle and High School days. During Middle School it was great! Peer conferencing frequently meant free time. Sure you would read each others paper and give feedback, but then you also had plenty of time to chit chat about whatever. When the teacher would walk around you would pretend to be on task so that you had more time to finish “conferencing.” I think if I was to use this in Middle School I would provide the questions that were provided for us. I think the question will help keep students on task and force them to really care. During High School we were pretty good at staying on task for peer conferencing. Although I was in AG classes so I imagine some students would get off task. Providing questions for High School students would not be such a bad thing also. For the Elementary group I think I would focus more on content than grammar. I would encourage the students to look for things that could make their peers stories more interesting.