It has been a few years since I wrote this primer and I have moved from using SurveyMonkey, PollEverywhere, and Google Forms to Turnitin and PeerGrade. When I speak at conferences and talk to other high school history teachers about using peer review and conferencing with students about their writing, they look at me like I have three heads. On Tuesday night, May 15th at 6 PT, I am hosting a #TeachWriting chat on using peer review. I’m hoping to learn how comfortable secondary teachers are using peer review so their students learn from evaluation.

This post will describe a timed summarization strategy that adapts what John Collins calls the 10% summary.  In this activity, I give students a reading on a historical topic. They have 20-25 minutes to summarize it. Then they swap papers with an elbow partner and have ten minutes to read the partner’s summary and grade it according to a criteria chart. I have found it helpful to include exemplar summaries, or mentor texts that demonstrate superior work.

During the first pass, my 10th-grade students wrote an average of 173 words. Their feedback was perfunctory and not helpful. See Figure 1.

After some direct instruction and modeling, this student was able to improve their feedback using specific language from the criteria chart.  See Figure 2.

These students need guided support when evaluating each others’ summaries. Focusing on simple to evaluate factors help students become more successful. Since I know the word count of the original text I asked them to summarize, after they count the number of words they wrote, they can tell me whether or not they met the 10% rule.  Next, I ask students to evaluate how well the author used their own words instead of copying directly from the text.

Lastly, we discuss the main ideas from the passage to determine whether or not the author was successful in listing and explaining them. This process can help students engage in content reading, build background knowledge, and learn from each other. It is an easy way for secondary Social Studies teachers to incorporate peer review into their everyday classroom instruction.