Writer's Workshop Peer Editing through Google Docs

This lesson should occur after students have a collection of stories, at least 3 to choose from.  This lesson is relevant when your students are ready for the peer editing stage.  This lesson should be done over 2-3 days, in order to provide students with practice and understanding of the process of peer editing.

Minds-on:  Gather students and show them this video.

At the end of the video, discuss: What is a good peer review?
Tell students they are going to start with learning how to give compliments today.  They will learn how to share suggestions and support their peers with corrections another day.
Share this anchor chart with them.  You can also have extra copies printed to post in the classroom. Go over how to give compliments and then tell students to choose one piece of writing to share with a peer.

Action:  Provide students with the opportunity to choose one story they have written on Google Docs to share with a peer. Remind students to share with the "comment" option, as to avoid students directly editing another students' work.  Show students how to highlight their peers' writing, in order to directly comment on a specific area.  Encourage students to read each others' writing, then choose 2 parts of the story to compliment on.  Ask students to share their edited work with the teacher so you can directly see what students are doing on-line.

Guiding Questions:  How can you be more specific in your compliments?

Consolidation:  Students can write positive, detailed feedback they either wrote or received on post-it notes and add this to the anchor chart.  Students can read others' posts and get ideas.

Extensions/Modifications:  Have students work in partners.  Give students a post-it note and have them come up with possible feedback they could provide a peer.  Collect post-it-notes and sort them by positive, detailed feedback or not very focused, descriptive feedback.  This could also be done using Padlet instead of post-it notes.