How peer reviews can build critical thinking, SEL skills

Educator Elizabeth Matlick writes for EdSurge that she started using self-assessments, writing reflections and peer reviews with her middle and high school students in a bid to extend guidance on their writing beyond her suggestions. However, Matlick found her students weren’t using these critiques as she’d hoped, according to a story in Edutopia. She then looked into research on how a learner’s emotional state may prevent them from taking in suggestions, finding her students were experiencing anxiety when they received criticism. Her students then worked together, learning that the way peers delivered feedback was important. But important, too, was the need for the students receiving suggestions to share the optimum ways for them to absorb the critiques.