Part Three: Practicing Peer Response

Host a peer response session when writers have completed a substantial first draft and are interested in receiving feedback.

The set up: When you have in hand or online a sufficient number of completed or mostly completed first drafts of breakthrough stories, plan to:

  • Invite teachers who themselves are trying to write breakthroughs stories and who are willing to come together to serve as peer responders.
  • Have peer responders work in pairs.
  • Give each pair three to four manuscripts for response.

Begin with a coaching session to build confidence and to prepare peer responders to give useful comments on their colleagues’ manuscripts.

Activity One

  • Illustrate the two roles peer responders will take on during the session when they read the manuscripts.
  • Role #1: Think like a writer of your own piece and what you can learn from reading someone else’s.
  • Role #2: Think like a colleague about how you can invest in the success of another writer.
  • As part of coaching, offer friendly reminders that will gently guide readers to think about the big picture and not get snarled in the weeds.

Activity Two

  • Work together to provide feedback on a manuscript in common. The purpose is to learn together how to craft a positive, constructive letter to each author, detailing the strengths of the piece and making suggestions.
  • As part of coaching, remind each other to stay with the words on the page. Stick with the author’s intention and work from the strengths.

Activity Three

  • Practice on a manuscript in common.
  • Provide time to read the manuscript.
  • Ask peer responders for positive comments as an exercise to get ready to write peer letters.

Sample comments about strengths from BAWP peer responders on a manuscript read in common:

  1. Strong narrative, compelling story, brings reader along—vulnerable narrator—we’re pulling for her.
  2. Purposefully and consistently compassionate; powerful use of sentence length variety for making a point and encouraging the reader to digest a moment; storytelling is engaging; explains moments of conflict clearly; reaches me as a teacher from a teacher.
  3. Context is clear from the start. Nice balance of narrative and explication. Unique yet relatable. Connection between experiences and teaching is clear; breakthrough/takeaway is clear.
  4. So relatable. The teacher as student. Any teacher reader will surely connect to this experience. In one setting we are the expert, in another setting we are the neophyte.
  5. Details give a strong sense of the setting and the emotional experience of the narrator. The takeaway or lesson is so clear. As a reader, I found paragraph #11 incredibly useful: how to teach different types of language learners.
  6. She frames the issue nicely. Her empathy for her students comes through nicely. She has strong descriptions setting up her experiences. She demonstrates her frustration well and transitions seamlessly from her frustrations to her students’. She added breakthrough moments that weren’t in your face. Lovely conclusion.
  7. I loved how her personal story offered her a sense of empathy for her own language learner students. I was particularly struck by paragraphs 8-9. She highlights the emotional impact and barriers to language, and how different this can be for different kinds of personalities/learners.

Activity Four

  • Learn together how to make constructive suggestions for letters to authors.
  • Use respectful frames when offering recommendations.

Coaching Session Over!
Readers are ready to work in pairs with assigned manuscripts.
Offer final reminders and procedures.