“Well, we didn’t really address the question too good” – a statement by one of my 3rd graders as his group brought their poster paper to the front of the classroom. Trying to encourage my students to write well-crafted constructed responses (as opposed to multiple choice or fill-in question responses) I felt little progress in spite of hours spent writing specific, individual feedback on their papers. So I made a “BCR Workshop” wherein two groups would respond to each of three questions about a shared reading (6 groups total) allowing us to compare between differing questions as well as within responses to the same stimulus. To prevent the one-student-does-it-all syndrome, each student had his/her own colored pen that “no one else may touch!” which enhanced the group interdependence – forcing them to communicate and allowing those who may sink into the background a chance to step up as a full member of the product.
Walking throughout the room as the students discussed, drafted, and wrote their response on poster sheets, I recognized the opportunity for formative assessment of individuals, of group dynamics, and – it turned out – of reading comprehension. (I decided I needed to include more Stop and Say Something as part of future shared readings) When most groups had a written response recorded, we wrapped up and prepared to be Speakers and Listeners as well as Encouragers. The first student team took their poster to the front of the classroom (carefully selected by the teacher to be a fairly strong but far from perfect sample, providing a student-generated model and making it ‘safe’ to share their work.) All the students were familiar with the criteria for a well-constructed response: complete idea, reference to the question stimulus, citing source/text evidence, some level of relevant elaboration which demonstrates comprehension (“Did you even have to read the text to write this answer?!”) So we established what would make an answer quality a 1, 2, or 3 and then once the student Speakers read their response, each classroom Listener held up fingers to indicate their Evaluation. I could ask a variety of students to explain/justify their score which created discussion, as well as feedback to the student group, “if you/they include….” OR “when you/they wrote…”
The first time I created this workshop, I was surprised that by the third or fourth group presentation, students no longer read their group’s response. Instead they held up their poster and their report became, “We should have…” and “We needed more….. So we give ourselves a 1 cuz we did show we read the text…” Yes, my plan had been to have the class hold up finger scores – Plan A – but it suddenly became asking the students if they agreed with the group’s self-assessment and encouraging explanation of where and how… Plan B? Maybe C?
This is a learning structure I have used at a variety of grade levels and have shared with teacher co-workers, department members, and new teacher mentees … each time finding the peer feedback within the group and from the class during presentation, impacts students’ writing more than hours and hours of ‘red pen’ mark ups.
The phrases in italics are “teacher lingo” that I did not learn many years later, but upon reflection can see the implementation … and tremendous benefit!