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I'm, oh yeah, "talking" and "taking action".
I think they are…verbs, verbs, but there is no verbs.
Oh, this is noun?
I use peer assessment in my classes a lot because I think
again, it goes back to the idea of autonomy
and helping the students stand on their own two feet
in terms of improving their writing
and developing criteria of what makes good writing.
And by seeing, again, seeing examples of their peers' writing
and being able to compare it to their own writing,
they can, again, say "Wow this is, I did a really good job."
or "Ugh, I've got some areas I need to improve."
The feedback activity was helpful because I learn about my mistake,
and I saw my friend mistake and learn about it.
I got a different information from
different student and all different opinion.
Uh huh. And each of the students has a new opinion.
So the activity that we did was an editing activity,
and the students were asked to edit a first draft of an essay.
And before, of course, they got to the editing step
the students had learned the different
parts that make an effective essay,
from a strong thesis statement to
body paragraphs that had topic sentences,
explaining sentences, all the different
parts that make a strong paragraph.
So let's just go over the checklist again.
So go to any station and follow the directions for highlighting,
and then you'll always see an example from our example essay.
Check each item using the guide questions.
Make any necessary changes and/or initial your checklist.
So, if you need to change something,
don't be afraid to go and hand write in your essay.
That's fine.
Ask a classmate to check your essay.
They should only initial if they agree,
so don't just say "ok, here", you know,
sign it and not look, that's not helpful.
Ok? And then go to a new station
only after you and a classmate have agreed.
Alright, how are you doing Mike? Ok good.
Sign my name here?
You just initial, your name.
But you must write here. It was short
Ah
Certain factors you must explain.
Maybe the first one is not so good.
So how many paragraphs do you have three or two? Three right?
Three, yeah.
The goal of this activity was for the students
to notice the strengths in their essays,
the things they'd done really well and that they were proud of,
but also to see where maybe they were missing some ideas
or missing some parts,
or possibly where the information wasn't as good as it could be.
This activity improved my, my essay.
For example, it improved my introduction,
and I used many examples.
I have a new, a new vocab, and I used a concluding sentence.
Also another goal was for students to see other examples,
their peers’ essays so that they could
compare "Wow, Yuki did this really well,
but maybe mine was better in this other part".
So they could kind of develop an inner
criteria of what makes a strong essay.
I think one of the big benefits of this activity is for students
to see many different kinds of writing from their peers
and also to evaluate their own writing in comparison to their peers.
They see examples of strong writing.
They see examples of weak writing.
And then they can kind of see how their writing
falls in, in this whole mix.
I learn from their mistakes, yes.
For example Yuki, my friend Yuki,
her essay doesn't have, doesn't have introduction section,
so I checked my introduction section again.
I think therefore they will accept his judgment.
So yeah, I'm sorry I didn't …
Short examples
So it's ok?
It's, I think it's ok.
As I was walking around listening to students
I noticed a lot of serious conversations.
A lot of students, especially the ones who had weaker writing,
really noticing that they had a lot of work to do on their essays.
One of the students,
she had written a very short paragraph style essay,
which was not enough and
she had made a list of everything she needed
to improve on her essay.
She was like "I need, I need to have bridges",
"I need to have stronger topic sentences".
So she had noticed all that.
So when she and I met the ...
when I had actually read her essay and made comments afterwards,
I said, I started talking about
everything that I thought she needed to proof.
She was like "Yeah I know, I really noticed that in this activity,
I, I was missing a lot of things".
And so she had already decided how she wanted to change her essay
without me telling her what she needed to do.
It was very empowering for her,
and her second draft was much better.
My teacher always teach me how to,
how to write a correct sentence and essay and
my friends always teach me I
should write more correct and clearly this part.
Do you agree with me? Yeah, I agree with you.
Ah, thank you.
I think they, they learn that they
can rely on each other and themselves.
A big part of my job is to help them become autonomous learners,
and because I'm not going to be there forever to hold their hands,
and so they learn that they can get useful feedback from their peers,
and they can also take a critical look at their own writing.
If they know what makes strong writing
they can look at their own writing and
make the changes that they need.
I like this activity because it has helped me a lot in my writing,
and it will improve my writing in the future, like in the university.
I should use the essay in the university and
all professor needs the essay or writing essay in their class.
Yeah, yeah, perfect.
What about that? That's the problem here I think, there's a problem.
This one?
Yeah, are you thinking there is a problem or not?
This, no, I don’t know. Its, it's not a real example.
Ok, I'm going to talk to her about that
so, but you said you're ok with that?
It's ok yeah.
…Closing sentences
Oh, here.
Yeah, yeah, perfect.
I think that alternative assessments are a little harder to control.
Standard assessments where, for an essay a standard assessment
would be me taking the essays, marking them up,
giving them comments and then having them make changes.
By having them do it themselves, you can't always control
that they're going to do what you're expecting them to do,
so that's one of the challenges, but the benefit is they feel,
again, they feel really in control of their
writing and improving their writing.
So you can use to communicate enough
and be calm down, and be patient.
Be patient.
Yeah. You must same time, same way,
like here: discussion, mediation.
This is your topic sentence, ok.
Yeah, I changed it.
Oh, I see.
Oh, you missed your topic sentence.
Yeah.
This activity is useful because it makes me understand
how to write a good essay, and the structure of essay.
So, after this activity, I can write better.
I think for teachers who want to try this type of alternative assessment,
it takes, it may take a lot of preparation.
This activity was pretty labor intensive on my part.
Getting the stations ready, getting the highlighters,
that type of organization really took a lot of logistics and set up,
but the benefits of doing it, I think,
are much greater than the
effort that I had to put into developing the activity.
So I say, "Go for it.
If you're interested in alternative assessments, go for it!"