LESSON TITLE: “Guided Peer Review Lesson” Lesson #: 2 

  
TEACHER NAME: Jonathan Huang  DATE:Delivered March 7th 
  
Attach any handouts or materials required for this lesson.  
Preparation/Planning 

ESL Course:                
Writing/Reading  Level  Beginning  Intermediate  Advanced  Multilevel 
□  X  X  □ 
Topic/Theme: 
Essay Writing Unit based 
on Charles Duhigg’s ​The 
Power of Habit 

   Listening  Students will be able to listen and understand each other through 
Objectives  the speed dating activity as well as group conversation regarding 
their essay drafts. ​Students will be able to receive critical 
questions and suggestions regarding their essay drafts and 
understand them in a way that prompts an appropriate response. 
Students will use what they hear in their peer review to foster 
deep thinking about their own essays. 

Speaking  Students will be able to share information and ask each other 
questions using sentence starters and guiding questions during the 
speed dating activity.  
Students will be able to use the memo sheet to guide  
Students will be able to clearly summarize their essay for their 
peers and provide each other with critical questions and 
suggestions regarding their essay drafts. 

Reading  The main reading objective is that students will be able to read 
peer essays with a focus on feedback needs as outlined on their 
peers’ memo sheets. 

Writing  Students will be able to write constructive feedback for their peer 
review partners. ​Students will be able to reflect on their own essay 
and write requests for certain kinds of feedback. Students will 
also write feedback tailored to their partners’ feedback requests. 

Bridging 
What background  The students will have background knowledge in reading and 
knowledge do the students  writing. They will have completed one essay assignment in class; 
already have?  therefore, they will also know how to write a complete essay. 
Students will also have already conducted one style of peer 
review workshop for their previous essay; therefore they know 
what peer reviews are and what purpose they provide. This is so 
students will already be familiar with some expectations for 
essay writing and will not have to be front-loaded with too much 
information at a time. At the time of the lesson, students will 
come to class with a draft of their essay to be reviewed. 

What will you do to activate  Materials 

or link students’ prior  Rubric: ​The rubric or assignment prompt is the handout detailing 
knowledge or experience to  the essay assignment. It contains a grading rubric on the back, 
upcoming content?  and details about what is required from each paragraph in the 
essay. 
 
Opening 
The lesson will begin with a review of the essay assignment. I will 
utilize the essay prompt and grading rubric as a way to recall 
information about the assignment and engage students’ 
metacognition about how to successfully meet the assignment 
goals. During this time, students will follow along on their rubrics 
and read lines from the rubric and assignment prompt. 
I will begin with an agenda slide, in which I foreshadow that part 
of the process of peer review will focus on an element of essay 
composition, the body paragraph structure.  
 
When we review the essay assignment, I will lead a class 
discussion on the content in each paragraph within the essay 
(this particular assignment outlined what should go in each body 
paragraph, but this can also be adapted for narrative writing or 
basic body paragraph structures). I will ask for volunteers to read 
chunks from the assignment prompt and use each passage to 
start a discussion with the class. I will give brief direct instruction 
on what content should go into a paragraph, and ask for students 
to elaborate with examples from their own drafts. 

Engagement with New Material 

What will you do to engage  Materials 
students in the active  Speed Dating Activity​: Students will form two concentric circles, 
learning of the new  facing each other. Students will pair up with someone across 
material?  them in the other circle. Each pair will have 6 minutes to share 
about their essay drafts using sentence starters and guiding 
questions displayed on the PPT presentation. Then one circle will 
rotate and students will form new pairs. This process repeats 
until there are three iterations of dates. The speed dating 
repetition helps students distill and communicate essential 
information about their own work. 
Memo Sheet:​ The memo sheet is for students to reflect on and 
answer questions about their own writing and their progress on 
their essay draft so far. Students will also write requests for 
feedback on specific areas. 
Peer Review Feedback Form​: The feedback form is for students 
to fill out about their peer review partner’s essay draft. Students 
write short responses to questions about the draft and create 
individualized feedback for their peers’ papers based on what 
their partners shared in the memo sheet. 
 
Speed Dating as Peer Review: 
I will introduce the class to the speed dating activity. After going 
over instructions, students will break into the respective groups 
to form the speed dating circles. They will conduct 3 rounds of 
speed dating, first listening to each other talk about their drafts, 
and then asking each other content related questions. Students 
will be able to use sentence starters and guiding questions 
displayed on the PPT presentation for this activity. They will 
have a total of 6 minutes per round of speed dating. The speed 
dating activity is meant to ensure that students are a) thinking 
about their essay drafts, b) thinking about how to communicate 
their essay ideas, and c) coming up with ways to more effectively 
communicate their ideas through repetition. 
 
Filling out Memos and Feedback Forms: 
After the speed-dating exercise, students will sit back down and I 
will guide them through completing their ‘memo’ sheets. I will 
model and also instruct them to think back on the speed-dating 
activity to help them summarize their own essays more clearly. 
After they have completed their memo sheets, students will pair 
up with a partner to swap memos and essays. They will discuss 
some of their answers on the memo sheet, then begin to peer 
 review each other’s essays by reading the draft and answering 
questions on the ‘peer review feedback form’ handout. 

What will you do to ensure  Multiple Intelligence Support​: The speed-dating activity is 
that all students are  interactive, gets students moving kinesthetically, and helps 
engaged?  students get into new pairs. There is also an audio-and-visual 
digital timer that I use to help students self-manage their 
discussion times. I will give instructions verbally and visually on 
the screen.  
 
Listening​: I will ensure that students are listening by checking in 
on pair discussions during speed dating and memo-sharing. I will 
ask students to repeat what their partner said about their work 
as a way to check that students are actively listening. 
 
Speaking​: I will circulate the room during paired discussion 
activities such as the speed dating exercise and 
pair-memo-sharing activity. I will ensure student engagement by 
checking for active conversation between partners. If pairs are 
not talking, I will stimulate conversation by asking questions 
about their work. I will also elicit student speaking during whole 
class discussions by asking open ended questions about the 
essay assignment and having students share their thoughts. 
 
Reading​: I will have students read off the slides and handouts. I 
will also ask students what portions of the text they read mean 
to them. During the assignment review, I will ask students how 
they are putting the paragraph requirements into action in their 
own writing. During the peer review, I will ask students 
questions about their peer’s feedback requests and how they 
plan to address those requests after reading the peer essay draft. 
 
Writing​: I will monitor the class when students are working on 
their memo sheets and feedback forms. I will check that students 
are filling out each section. I will ask content related questions to 
elicit student thinking about the essay drafts they and their peer 
have submitted for the peer review workshop. 

Application 
What opportunities will you  The assignment review is a time for students to apply 
provide students to practice  metacognition to their own essay writing in terms of thinking of 
and apply their  how to meet the expectations in the rubric.  
knowledge/skill to meet the   
objectives for this lesson?  The speed-dating rounds will help students practice 
To apply to other contexts?  communicating ideas and crystallizing essential information, 
creating clarity, and asking critical questions. This skill will later 
be practiced again during memo-writing and peer review 
feedback giving.  
 
These handouts are designed to help students think 
metacognitively and affectively about their work and also be 
able to communicate those thoughts to their peers. The final 
peer review activity helps students practice reading with a focus, 
which in this case is whatever their peer asks for feedback on in 
addition to the information they disclosed about their feelings 
about their own drafts.  
 
The focus will also tie back to the assignment review and 
students will be asked to critically evaluate the work against the 
structures reviewed earlier in the lesson. 

Assessment 

How will you assess their  This lesson will contain informal assessments. I will use the 
learning of the objectives?  handouts as a guide to student output and feedback giving 
during monitoring. I will check that students are filling out the 
handouts as a way of assessing engagement with the material 
and practice with language skills.  
 
I will also circulate the room during speed-dating rounds to 
ensure that each pair is talking with each other. During 
whole-class discussions and direct instruction, I will elicit and be 
aware of student questions to guide my instruction and adapt as 
needed. I will notice what students seem to ask the most 
questions about as a way of assessing what content needs to be 
covered. If multiple students ask the same questions, I will 
understand that there is a confusion about what to do. When 
students seem confused during the execution of a task, I will also 
use those moments to address the whole class again to clarify 
instructions. 
 
 Finally, when I monitor student work, I will glace at students’ 
memo sheets and feedback forms and assess if they are 
completing each section with enough detail to be useful in a peer 
review. I will spend a few minutes with each group or pair to read 
over their memos and what they are writing for feedback, and 
then I will ask individualized guiding questions to help them think 
more metacognitively about the task, and how they could be 
giving the appropriate feedback to their peer. 

Closing 

How will you help students  I will use a recap slide at the end of my powerpoint to engage the 
recap the learning and link it  class in a final, whole-class direct instruction approach. I will 
back to the original purpose  summarize the activities that we did together. During this time, 
of the lesson?  students will share what they take away from the peer review 
session, the speed dating activity, or the assignment review. I will 
also ask students to share about how they plan to rework their 
essays based on today’s lesson. At the end, I give my rationale for 
each of the activities and what students can take away in terms 
of skills that they develop. 

Technology    

If applicable for your  I use Google Slides and a YouTube timer embedded in the slide 
context and your lesson,  as a presentation activity in the classroom. The YouTube timer 
how will you meaningfully  allowed students to manage their pair discussion times. My slides 
integrate technology into  also contain some images and GIFs to ensure student 
your lesson?  engagement and also create a lighter mood. I used a GIF to 
   visually model what a speed dating session looked like. 

Reflection 

What went well? How do  The assignment review and the speed-dating exercise went 
you know?  really well. For the review, students were engaged and I knew 
this as they asked many questions that reflected their genuine 
thinking about the assignment - for example, even though we 
were discussing paragraph structure, students still wanted to 
learn about MLA format and transition words. In the 
speed-dating activity, students were engaged and positive 
towards each other, and filled up each round with full 
conversations that remained on topic.  
 
Students also successfully filled out their memo sheets, which 
 were also used well for peer feedback. I walked around the 
classroom to ensure that students were writing clear responses 
on the memo sheet, and later again to ask students how they 
planned to address their peers’ memo sheet responses in the 
feedback form. My students were able to articulate advice they 
were giving their peers that matched the feedback needs their 
peers wrote in the memo sheets. 

What didn’t go as planned?  My review took much longer than I anticipated because students 
got invested into learning about the expectations of the essay, 
and had a lot of questions for each section that we covered. 
Overall, time management was my biggest issue in this lesson, 
and I ran overtime as a result. I also did not anticipate that 
setting up for the speed dating would take as long as it did. I was 
hoping to give students more time to reflect on various exercises 
after they were completed, but due to time constraints, I took 
out these reflective activities. I also had to skip my pair 
discussions over memo-sheets and reduce the time students had 
to review their peers’ essays, from 40 minutes to a maximum of 
25 minutes.  

What contingency plan did  When I noticed I was running overtime, I decided to insert a 
you employ?  break right after the speed-dating exercises. The class normally 
takes a break at a half-point in the session. I had planned for a 
break after students completed the speed dating exercises and 
also had some time to reflect on the exercise and their essays. 
Instead, I moved the break up and combined the reflection 
session with the memo-writing session. I reduced the time they 
had to fill out memos from the intended 10 minutes to 5 minutes, 
and also cut away the activity where they discussed memos with 
their peer review partners. Instead, peers would individually 
read each others’ memos and begin working on essay reading 
and feedback. I tried to give them as much time above 15-20 
minutes for essay reading and feedback, but also had to save 
time for a 5 minute recap at the end of the lesson. I ended up 
needing to spend 1 hour and 40 minutes total on this lesson, 
which was longer than I anticipated. 

What would you do  Next time, I would cut this lesson in half and deliver it in 
differently next time?  consecutive sessions during the same week. The first half will 
start from the beginning and conclude after students complete 
their memos. The second half will start with students reviewing 
their memos and sharing them with their peer review partners 
 and continue through the end of the peer review lesson. 

Did your students meet the  For speaking, I believe students met their objectives easily 
purpose and objectives for  through the speed-dating rounds. I noticed that each consecutive 
this lesson? What is your  round went much more smoothly than the last and that a lot of 
evidence for each?  was being covered. For listening, I also noticed that a lot more 
questions were being asked in each consecutive round. For 
writing, I saw that students were utilizing the memo sheets and 
creating thoughtful feedback requests, though not every student 
demonstrated this. In addition, not every student was able to 
independently write feedback tailored to their peer’s requests - I 
had to support some students who didn’t understand the paired 
purpose of the memo and feedback forms. In terms of reading, I 
think the students who were able to answer their peers’ 
feedback questions and requests were also able to read with a 
focus. 

What do your students need  My students will need more instruction on writing transitional 
next? How do you know?  phrases and sentences, and general grammar review. This was 
communicated to me by a few students after the lesson because 
they felt that the peer review was helpful, but they wanted more 
professional (instructor-based) feedback in regards to their 
grammar and composition. 

What did you learn about  I learned that I come across as very confident and 
your glows and grows as a  knowledgeable even when I don’t feel it myself. For example, I 
teacher? What can you do  conducted the assignment review because I felt it was needed at 
to work on your areas  the start of the lesson, but I didn’t know very much about the 
needing growth?   assignment myself given that I had not seen it before. However, 
my mentor instructor said I was able to give the correct 
information to students for each element of the assignment and 
that they had responded positively and had told her that I 
cleared up confusions they had about the assignment. I also 
learned that I needed to work on my opening, still - even though I 
opened with some informal, non-academic questions and took 
my time with the agenda slide, my mentor mentioned that I could 
walk around the room while I did so, make more jokes as a 
starter, and actively engage students through body language and 
humor. Finally, I learned that I need to manage my time more 
effectively and not pack too many activities into one lesson. 
Another element of time management was also instruction 
giving, and making instructions as clear as possible to allow for 
efficient activity set-up and transitions. For example, my speed 
 dating exercise took a while to set up, and also a while to clarify 
students’ confusion about the procedure. 

               
    
 March 7, 2019: Peer Review Lesson

1. Opening with soft questions...about week, life.

2. Going over the agenda slide
3. Reviewing Essay Assignment Outline
a. Ask students to read the outline provided
b. Reviewing Paragraph Structure
i. Look at the blue rubric
ii. NOT a How-To paper, but a How-YOU paper.
c. Instructions for speed dating and clarify confusion
4. Set up the classroom for speed dating activity
a. Count off 1 & 2; create two circles facing each other
b. Review guiding prompts and sample questions, timing of activity, listening
5. Speed Dating activity: monitor pairs as they share; call out time and facilitate moving
6. Students sit in seats again; think about their essays (2-3 minutes)
7. Talking about creating a memo, modeling how to complete one
8. Students fill out their memos; monitor and answer questions (10 minutes)
a. Think about what they want to share with someone else (3 minutes)
9. Pair & Share memos, discuss their answers; monitor groups (2 minutes each)
10. Go over the feedback form; students swap papers and begin reading/feedback (30-40)
11. Assessment: informal; look at how they fill out memos and feedback forms
12. Closing:
a. review the outline of the assignment
b. Recap of activities and how they help with student writing
i. Speed-dating helps you think about your essay through repetition
ii. Peers introduce you to fresh elements, new ideas and questions
iii. Memos help you to put those thoughts down in writing AND help others
understand your work better
iv. Feedback forms will be useful for making revisions to your writing
v. ALSO: How can you apply the advice you give others to your own writing?
 Peer Review Memo

Essay Author:

Please write a brief description of your paper. Include information on your thesis/your habit that
you are working to change. Recall the way you presented your topic during Speed Dating.

What have you accomplished so far with this paper?

What have you not done yet with this paper?

What are you unhappy with in this draft?

What are you proud of in this draft? Pick a specific line that you liked writing, for example.

What do you want your reviewer to pay attention to while he/she reads your work? Write specific
feedback questions for your peer reviewer:
 Peer Review Feedback Form

Essay Author:

Reviewed By:

1. What is the biggest unresolved question you have after reading this paper? What
confused you or needs more explaining, if anything?

2. What do you want to read more about in this draft? Why?

3. What are the draft’s biggest strengths?

4. What are three things the author can do to improve this draft?

5. Do the paragraphs stay on topic in terms of the assignment outline?

Which ones need more focus?