Peer Review Resources

Advice on Giving and Using Peer Reviews
• Teach students to avoid vague comments.
• Descriptive alternatives to vague comments

Peer review exercises from Peter Elbow's and Pat Belanoff's Sharing and Responding (New York: Random House, 1989):

• Reading out loud, where you share writing for its own sake
• Center of gravity, where you describe the focal point of the paper
• Believing/doubting, where you support, then challenge, a writer's ideas
• Say back, where you recall as much as you can based on what the writer wrote
• Metaphor, where you describe a paper in 'other' terms
Other Popular and Useful Peer Review Activites
• Nutshelling, where you reveal the essence of a thought
• Reading for flow, where you help writers share their logic and the connections their minds make
• Requirements, where you make sure the paper meets requirements
  
• Hovering, where you describe what's almost said or on the verge of being expressed
• Proofreading, where you serve as your classmate's eyes
• Reviewing reviews, where you meet with other writers to talk about peer reviews received