The Eliot Conference: An analysis of a Peer Response Group

Peer response is one of the most challenging tasks we ask students to tackle, and we wonder, “are they really on task?” Denyer and LaFleur investigate this by looking closely at one peer revision group, seemingly off track, and find that students do engage in complicated tasks as they struggle to justify their decisions as authors to their peers and offer feedback to challenge those decisions. They advise that teachers should continue to create situations for students to meet with their peers to talk about their writing, guiding them to thinking about how they integrate that feedback into their text.