Better Writing with Big Paper: Peer Correction in Collaborative Learning Teams

Teachers argue about how much to correct pupils' writing: correct everything and pupils learn little, correct nothing and they learn less. This technique hands much of the correcting to the pupils, and makes them think while they do it.

A piece of a pupil's writing, not yet seen by the teacher, is stuck in the centre of a large sheet of paper. A small group gathers round it and, without speaking, writes comments on its spelling, grammar and punctuation - then comments on each other's comments. The finished sheets go up on the wall as a gallery.

1. Prepare the paper: flipchart or A3 sheets - or six A4 sheets taped together - and pens in different colours.
2. Form groups of four or five, and give each a name or a colour.
3. Use writing pupils have already done - a paragraph from homework, uncorrected by you - as the text in the middle.
4. Work in silence: each pupil writes corrections and comments round the text, marking their own comments with a colour or a shape so authorship is clear.
5. Reply to each other's comments, still in writing.
6. Display the sheets and let the class walk round and read them. In a class of thirty or more, larger groups take turns at the paper, which takes a little longer.

It needs paper, pens and some tape, and it turns forty separate marking jobs into a handful of posters that the class has already corrected. Your part becomes checking the corrections, not making them.

Choose a paragraph that shows the errors the whole class is making - tense, articles, capital letters - and the poster teaches the point to everyone who reads it. It spreads over two lessons, so plan it into the unit rather than squeezing it into one period.