The impact of peer review on middle school writers: A case study

Rationale

Teaching English Language Arts encompasses reading, writing, speech and language skills, and everything else that falls under these domains. With so many aspects to cover, teachers are always looking for innovative strategies to work smarter when it comes to student success. Through my subject area, I notice students are frustrated and unmotivated whenever we work on writing. When a student verbalizes that they don’t like writing, I typically see a lack of participation and effort that coincides with the lack of confidence, both in sharing out and in skills. Meanwhile, even higher performers are often lacking aplomb in their ability and constantly want me to check their work, which monopolizes much of my time. Because engagement is not evenly spread, neither is my time spent with each student. In a ninety-minute class period, there is not enough time to give everyone the individual attention to build their confidence and writing skills.

Through my study, I will implement a peer review process to evaluate how this impacts their writing in various ways. I plan to examine how peer review may affect their writing skills, scores, engagement, self-efficacy, and ultimately their mindset towards writing. By working closely with the rubric and analyzing others’ writing, this may make their own writing stronger as well. With the method of peer review, all students could receive the one-to-one attention and feedback that their work deserves. 

Context

I currently teach middle school English Language Arts for sixth grade at A.D. Henderson University School, which is an A-rated public K-8 school affiliated with Florida Atlantic University. This is a Title I school, with a vision statement to be “a national exemplary model for school systems and teacher preparation programs improving education for diverse student populations through innovative, faculty-developed research and curriculum.” My study will pertain to students in the sixth-grade level, who all take my ELA course, as I am the only sixth-grade teacher.

Supportive Literature

Regardless of how students perceive the process of peer review, it has significant beneficial effects on the quality of essay writing. The practice of evaluating others’ work with a clear rubric helps students to learn and identify the critical elements to academic writing so that they can apply it to their own writing skills (Philippakos & MacArthur, 2016). The experience of giving feedback to peers fosters students’ ability to write higher quality essays (Philippakos & MacArthur, 2016) and is more impactful than the actual comments received (Baker, 2016; Kaufman & Schunn, 2011; Schunn, Godley, & DeMartino, 2016). In addition, student writers trend toward making more meaningful improvements, rather than solely surface-level changes in their final draft submissions after engaging in peer review (Baker, 2016). Although some students might have negative opinions on essay writing, the peer review process, and the qualifications of their peers to give comments on their work, it is encouraging that research shows there is no correlation between this perspective and the effort or number of complex changes made to their own paper in revision (Kaufman & Schunn, 2011).

While evaluating peer work has much relevance in the process of writing instruction, one major challenge is found in retention of these learned skills. When given a second post-test essay after revision, students show some decline from the immediate post-test results (Philippakos & MacArthur, 2016). Repetition is key. Continued use of peer assessment as a part of normal education may both encourage a more positive mindset towards the process and foster improved retention of writing skills, however, these findings are not conclusive, and more research is needed.

Research Methods

The study took place during the second semester of the 2021-2022 school year, throughout quarters three and four. All students began the unit with a pre-survey, which gauged their opinions on a scale of one to five. Since students at this school are on an A/B block schedule, they meet for this class every other day. Critical elements included in the study were a pre survey, four peer review activities with mini lessons and exit tickets, the essay revision, and a post survey, which were all facilitated over a six-week timespan. When all the peer review sessions were finished and essays were completely reviewed, students took two class periods to work on their own essay revisions, given the feedback they received. The end of the study concluded with a post survey on Google Forms, which was identical to the pre survey, except for a few extra questions that were added at the end.

Throughout the project, I collected other qualitative feedback through observations and comments overheard in my researcher journal. This study also includes quantitative data regarding the number of changes/corrections made from the original essay to the revised final product, and how many of those changes were meaningful changes to content or structure, rather than just edits to grammar and syntax.

Results

From data analysis on this study, three themes emerged: the positive impact of peer review on writing scores and ability, the connection between collaboration and self-efficacy in peer review, and improved engagement in writing through scaffolded lessons and collaboration. The first finding demonstrated improved writing scores on students’ informational essays based on the rubric scoring from their drafts to final revisions. The element most impacted on the rubric was organization of ideas. One surprising observation was to find that 100% of students in the study predicted their revision score to be a passing average score of 7 or higher, while 28% of initial draft scores were below a 7. Upon final review, 15 out of 18 students (83%) made a gain of at least one point higher. When writing final revisions, students used “Suggestion” mode on Google Docs to make corrections on the original essays. On average, the number of items changed in revision was 16, with an average of 5 meaningful changes.

A second trend began to emerge through data analysis when students worked collaboratively on peer review activities and were able to rely less on the teacher. When students began the shift to peer review with a partner, student self-efficacy ratings for feeling good at writing essays increased, and the number of times students asked the teacher questions decreased significantly. In lesson 1, 11.1% of students reported that they felt they were good at writing essays. By lesson 5, this number grew to 29.4% of participants reporting they felt good at writing essays. During revisions for the final draft, one student said, “This has to be the worst essay I ever wrote.” When I asked why they say that, they responded, “Well, I know what a good essay looks like now.”

The third finding came from an unexpected change in teaching practices by allowing students to choose a partner to work on peer review markings with. Initially, students were the most engaged during the mini lessons, especially while discussing as a whole group which parts of the examples and nonexamples were acceptable or not. As I noticed the great lack of focus and distractions during the peer review, which students were taking a long time to complete, I decided to invite students to work with a partner of their choice to work on reviews. At that point, there was a surprising positive shift in focus. From the unit’s pre survey, 17.6% of students responded that they were comfortable asking questions and participating during class, which grew to 33.3% by the post survey. In the post survey, 55% of students commented that they would not change anything about the peer review session lesson structure, and I noticed a great number of comments about students liking that they were able to work with partners on the exit tickets from lessons three through five.

Implications

Writing is a laborious area of study to teach. English teachers fight the battle of how to make academic writing engaging when so many students resign themselves to disliking it. With various other topics that English instruction must cover, like grammar, vocabulary, and comprehension, writing is a strong vehicle to link all these parts together. The importance of writing skills resounds beyond formulating an informational essay to meet the standards of a state test; it is a demanding life skill that people need even beyond the professional realm. No matter what a student does with their career, four of the most important skills for success arguable start with speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Educators face the challenge of helping all students realize and push the limits of their potential, yet we are only one person in the classroom and it’s both demanding and impossible to give every student the full attention they deserve. Through peer review, teachers can release some of the guidance and assistance needed onto the students to collaborate and become more independent.

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