Blog Post #3: Peer Editing

The question of the week is "What is peer editing?" As stated on Colby College, "Peer editing can be a confidence builder to those writers who are insecure about their own writing". Peer editing can also be described as a way to check a peers work on the grounds of a positive learning environment. The main way to help a classmate or peer is to use compliments or suggestions. These suggestions can be over the types of word choice, organization, sentence structure, and the flow of the topic throughout the peers work. After watching What is Peer Editing? I learned that you are critiquing a peers work. This means that this person is your own age. So while critiquing it is important to keep in mind that not only do they make mistakes, but you do to. Why be mean when you know if someone was mean to you, you would be hurt also? When peer editing the main goal is to stay positive by using compliments and helpful criticism. Instead of saying that your peers work is horrible and being rude, you can say that they need to use better word usage and sentence structure. From my own experience with teachers and fellow classmates, people believe that to get better you need to be broken down. This is not the way that I see helpful. I have been broken down many times to believe that the only way to help someone is to build them up and be productive with your criticism. 

While looking over the slideshow, Peer Edit with Perfection Tutorial, I learned that there are three steps to peer editing. The three steps are using compliments, making suggestions, and helping with corrections. By making a rubric to use when peer editing is a helpful way to stay on topic. Ask yourself if they used good word choice, added helpful details, used their organization skills to make it easy to read, and if they stayed on topic. Help your peer by checking for spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, run on and incomplete sentences, and punctuation mistakes. The video Writing Peer Review is a funny video on the right and wrongs of peer reviewing from the mean, loud, and just plain uncaring. The students show the different scenarios of how peer editing can go wrong in a classroom. I think this video will be a great way to show my class what not to do when peer editing and be more helpful to each other.