Students in the writing group completed their narratives and provided positive, thoughtful and helpful peer feedback to each other. They were honest in their feedback. I noticed that after receiving feedback from peers, the students wanted clarifications, challenged the peer feedback in a friendly manner and pointed to the evidence in the narrative in case the students were told to do something that they had already done. This was heartening to see. I loved listening in and felt proud of how students were giving and receiving feedback. 

I provided the students effective feedback too. I told the students to tell me if they thought that the feedback was not accurate or effective.  The students said that the feedforward they received was very helpful.

Students are at this moment responding to both peer and teacher feedback and crafting their sentences and paragraphs to improve their writing. 

On asking if the process we were following was good or needed improvement, the students responded that the process was good but the time given for responding to feedback was less than what they expected. 

I have started working with one student at a time, going through the feedback provided and what the student did as a response. This I think is enabling the students to understand the feedback and respond appropriately. 

I am enjoying this process. I am proud of one student whose narrative is ready for publishing in the magazine Toi Toi.

Responding to Peer and Teacher feedback

The target students wrote narratives with the prompts provided by the teacher. They planned their stories, drafted the stories, edited and proofread their work, then shared it with assigned peers and the teacher to give and receive feedback and feedforward.

The students wrote their narratives with the audience and purpose in mind.

Students used the rubrics in child speak to provide the feedback. They then, responded to the feedback provided by their peers and me.

During this process the students mentioned to me that they could see the difference between how they first wrote their stories and how while responding to the feedback, they noticed that the stories sounded better than when they first wrote the story. I think the process we are following right now, mentioned above is working and the students are crafting their sentences deliberately and writing better stories.

This is exciting already.