Students as Teachers

This week, as I walked into numerous classrooms, there was a quiet "buzz" within the rooms. Students were spread around the room, working in pairs and working in groups. As I moved from partnership to partnership, the conversations were astonishing. Students in one classroom were working together to write a response comparing and contrasting two articles. They kept looking at their rubic, as they were underlining and highlighting pieces within the article.

"Well, I think we have the part about theme covered. But we need to add more about author's craft to bump up our work to a 5." 

Partners then switched their responses with other partners and gave each other feedback. The classroom buzzed with conversation. 

"Well, why do you think that's a 3?"

"Oh man, we got a 4. What can we change to make it a 5?"

"Let's go back into the text and see if we can add on."

In another classroom, students were using their narrative writing rubrics to assess their own writing, and work with partners to edit and assess their writing.

"Do you think you could add some more information here?"  

"Let's go back and look at your punctuation."

Students engaging with each other to continue growing their work is a wonderful picture to see!