Peer Assessments - Yr1

[Passthesherry]

Hi

Could someone explain to me what is the point of peer assessments?

To my untrained eye it seems like a faddy new thing-of-the-moment, that sounds pc, and saves teachers time from marking.

I can imagine that the positives might be along the lines of getting them to see how they are doing in relation to friends, get them to consider others feelings, encourage teamwork and co-operation, create a positive and encouraging atmosphere in class etc.

Just skeptical about how 5yos are able to provide each other constructive feedback, beyond "I like your drawing of a horse" and not sure this is going to improve education standards.

Sorry I don't mean to offend teachers who think it's great - I would just like to understand a bit more about why it's such a good thing?

[tabulahrasa]

While they're assessing someone else's work, they (usually) work out why they've gone wrong with theirs (if they have of course) so they're learning quicker...they don't have to wait for the teacher to explain it and of course because they've worked it out themselves they're more likely to remember it.

It does save teacher's time, but that time is also the pupil's time - instant results rather than having to wait. You've also got the chance to over any issues pupils had straight away rather than moving on to something else and coming back to it.

The teacher has to be explicit about what they're supposed to be doing, they can't just say draw a picture...mark it. It would have to be, we have been learning about animals with 4 legs, draw one... now check that the pupil has done what is asked. So that everyone knows exactly what they are doing and why, then when given a picture of a horse the child marking it is able to go, it is a horse, I know they have 4 legs because that's what we have been doing (so applying what they have learned) also I can see all 4 legs - good horse. Or, I can see it is a horse, but it only has three legs, I know horses have 4 legs - next time draw the legs, or, I can't tell what this is supposed to be and it has 3 legs, next time make sure all the legs are there, or, this is a snake, snakes do not have 4 legs.

Because they know the marking criteria they can give constructive feedback...

Also, they love it, lol, it gives a nice wee end to a lesson.

[BrigitBigKnickers]

My Deputy Head is obsessed with AFL- it does seem a bit of a faff- especially with little ones or those with special needs (quite hard to see how they are supposed to check another child's work using success criteria if they can't bloody read or have significantly delayed language...but she still bangs on about it every time she observes my lessons.)

Having said that for older children I can see how it can sometimes be useful- kids love to spot mistakes in other pupils work and it maybe makes them more inclined to self monitor their own work.

[TheFallenNinja]

Hmm. Not sure about this. It runs the risk of turning into tactical voting.

Not entirely sure of the educational value of peer review.

[muppet1969]

They peer assess, which gives them a MUCH better understanding of how they can improve their own work and THEN the teacher marks it as well. it's not instead of!

[TroublesomeEx]

When tabulahrasa and muppet1969 said.

It encourages them to view their own and others' work with a critical eye. They practice articulating their thoughts and ideas if they have to explain to their peers what they liked and why and what could be even better and why.

It's one of those things that it's hard to explain, but if you've seen it in action, the children really seem to get a lot out of it.

Quite often whilst they are 'marking' someone else's work they have a 'lightbulb moment' about their own work and want to improve it.

[Passthesherry]

Ok thanks - it does make more sense now. The work that I saw only had the peer assessed comments in, nothing from the teacher, so I actually did have the impression it was instead of!

[Shattereddreams]

But what about the child at the top? What benefit do they get?

[wigglywoowoo]

I think even at the top there is still remove for improvement as there will always be something to change to take it to the next level. A Y1 child may struggle to do this if the work is that good but it is always useful to hear alternative perspectives on your work.

[PeasandCucumbers]

What about the child at the bottom? Is it really useful for a primary aged child, especially once they get to an age where they know the pecking order in terms of academic ability in the class, to have another child pointing out their inadequacies? How does this help the self esteem or confidence of lower ability children? Do young children really have the capacity to be truly constructive?

[kicker]

Don't know if it's totally relevant, but my son's teacher got them to mark each others spelling tests. Good idea in theory. What happened in reality was that a little sod marked 6 of my son's spellings wrong when they weren't, simply because he doesn't like him. Luckily DS asked his teacher to double check. As with most things can be useful but if you have personality clashes it makes the exercise redundant and less than constructive.

[MerryCouthyMows]

Peer assessment is utterly SHITE for DC's with LD's in MS. That is all.

[MerryCouthyMows]

And if I could 'like' the above post I would too.

What exactly is the merit in getting a 10yo working on lvl 3/4 Maths 'marking' a piece of another 10yo's level 6/7 Maths work that he has no idea if the answers are correct? Which is what happens when DS1's Maths work is Peer assessed.

Honestly, how is that a productive way for the other child to spend their time? And how is it going to be productive for my DS1 to mark work he could do 3 years ago? Is it going to help him to see where he went wrong on a worksheet 3 years ago...?

All I can see is that it is to save the teacher from having to mark as much work. Waste of time IMO.

DS1 often has every question marked 'wrong' by someone who doesn't understand the work DS1 is doing, and then DS1 gets upset because he is sure answers A,C, and D are correct but is unsure of B, and then he has to wait for the class teacher to mark it anyway. Whilst being upset because he now thinks he has got them wrong.

I bloody hate this.

[tabulahrasa]

There's no benefit to marking work you haven't done - that's it being used wrongly IMO and with maths the answer should be provided or there's no point to it.

Of course there's the chance that children might try to be malicious or even help friends, but it's not done in isolation and never looked at by the teacher - so issues like that are easily corrected.

[TroublesomeEx]

I think it needs to be remembered that peer assessment is a very tiny part of assessment.

You wouldn't have a child working at level 3/4 peer marking a piece of level 6/7 work because they simply wouldn't be in the same group working together. And if this is what is happening then it's not being applied correctly.

Peer assessment is supposed to look more like:

LO: To make your sentence more interesting using 'wow' words.

So the children take a sentence they have written and re-write it using wow words. They are then peer assessed by another child who has to identify the wow word/s used and underline them in coloured pencil. The child 'assessing' then has to think of an alternative/additional wow word to the one used or to suggest a place in the sentence when another wow word could be used. They feed this back to the child whose work it is and then they look at their work and use this feedback to improve it. Meanwhile, the assessing child has got some more ideas for when they receive their own work back.

It doesn't make the teacher's job easier. Peer assessment is very full on for the teacher if it's done properly!