Blog Post 3: Peer Editing

How Can You Provide Meaningful Feedback to Your Peers?

Peer editing is more than just telling someone what is wrong with their work. There are certain steps to take in order to provide meaningful feedback that will help the writer edit his/her work. After watching the video What is Peer Editing? I learned that not only do you critique other's work, but you are critiquing your peers. This means it is someone your own age. For many it is always easier to correct someone younger than you because the older person usually as more knowledge and experience, but when it is someone around the same age as you it can be more difficult. This video along with the slideshow Peer Edit with Perfection Tutorial I learned that there are three main steps to follow when peer editing: compliments, suggestions, and corrections. For compliments you should find something you like about your peer's work and compliment it. For me this is usually the easy part. When you make a suggestion about someone's work you are simply giving them ideas about how they can better their writing. Corrections are the step where you show your peer where they have made grammatical errors and others writing mistakes. No matter what step you are on it is very important that you always stay positive. No one likes hearing what is wrong with their work, especially if the editor is negative.

The video Writing Peer Review Top 10 Mistakes is a funny video starring younger children teaching about how to peer edit correctly. They give many examples of how not to peer edit. While watching it made me laugh a few times, it was also very eye opening. The students acted out different scenarios and their reactions really showed me how peer editing can be difficult at times. I took away a lot of good information from this video because it was from the student's point of view and helped me understand their individual struggles.