Dive Brief:
- Teenagers may not be motivated by the threat of a low grade, but former teacher Christina Gil writes for Edutopia they can often be coerced into caring if the intended audience for their writing is not just a teacher, but their peers.
- One of Gil’s projects is the “satirical how-to” or ironic process essay, where students try extra hard to get their friends to laugh with topics like “How to Procrastinate,” and “two truths and a lie” inspires students to write three paragraph-length stories with rich detail to trick their friends into picking out the wrong “lie.”
- With reading logs, Gil assigns students a number before they do their homework, and then, in class, rolls a die to decide which students read their stories out loud, ensuring all of them prepare for the chance of presenting, and “jigsaw presentation” ask students to become experts on pieces of the material before presenting to the entire class, which is ultimately responsible for the whole puzzle.
Dive Insight:
Beyond using teaching tactics that put student reputations on the line and force higher-quality work, schools can take advantage of the benefits of peer learning. Sometimes students can explain difficult subject matter better than their teachers because they understand how their friends think. Using different vocabulary or approaching the topic from a different angle can allow something to click.
One of the seven moves identified in a recent playbook for teachers that highlights strategies of successful managers to improve classrooms is fostering peer-to-peer learning. This goes along with relinquishing some control of direct instruction, which can be hard, but it can ultimately help students and improve the classroom environment overall.