Coloured Dots

This activity uses small circular stickers to provide peer feedback.

The stickers should be in a variety of colours, and you can find them online for a couple of pounds.

The two great benefits of the approach are that it allows all learners to look at a wide range of work and that it provides everyone in the class with some level of positive feedback.

Here are three ways you can put it into practice:

• Coloured Dots Peer-Assessment: Method One

Learners display their work on their desks.

Each learner receives an allocation of coloured dots.

They should receive about a third the number of dots as there are learners in the class. For example, if you have thirty learners, each learner should get around ten dots.

Invite learners to walk around the room and to place their coloured dots on work they think is good.

They should write a comment next to their dot, indicating what it is they think is good about the work.

There are two rules.

First, learners are not allowed to give more than two dots to any one piece of work.

Second, once a piece of work has X number of dots (the exact number will depend on how many learners you have in your class – you will need to calculate what the number should be), it may not receive any more.

This ensures everyone in the class receives positive comments about their work.

• Coloured Dots Peer-Assessment: Method Two

Learners receive a pro-forma.

This contains a list of adjectives and/or statements relating to the work the class have been doing.

For example: innovative, creative, thoughtful, analytical, makes good use of reasons, demonstrates understanding of the text, and so on.

(What goes on the sheet depends on what you have been doing with your learners and, therefore, what is most relevant.)

Learners write their name at the top of their pro-forma and place it on their desk, beside their work.

Next, each learner receives an allocation of coloured dots. (About a third the number of dots as there are learners in the class.)

Invite learners to walk around the room and to look at the work that is on display.

They should choose a piece of work they like, go to the adjacent pro-forma, and place a coloured dot next to what they feel is the most relevant statement or adjective.

Then they repeat this until they are out of coloured dots.

There is only one rule: Learners are not allowed to place more than one dot on any single pro-forma.

This ensures all learners receive praise for their work (and, just to be sure this happens, you can go round with some stickers as well).

• Coloured Dots Peer-Assessment: Method Three

The third option is to run the activity as above (method two), but with one alteration.

Provide two thirds of the class with stickers of one colour. These are ‘strength’ stickers.

Provide the final third of the class with stickers of another colour. These are ‘target’ stickers.

Learners receiving target stickers should be given three each (this means there will be one target sticker per learner in the class).

Learners walk around the room and place their stickers on pieces of work, writing their comments next to them.

Those who have ‘target’ stickers are only allowed to place them on work that already has three or more ‘strength’ stickers.

This ensures you get a good balance of strengths to targets (and also means that those with ‘target’ stickers will chivvy along those with ‘strength’ stickers if they are being tardy!).

Work on Desks

This is a variation on the three approaches outlined above. Another way you can change the peer-assessment dynamic and get your learners looking critically at each other’s work.

It works as follows.

Learners display their work on their desks.

The teacher divides the class.

• If learners have been working individually then two thirds are designated as ‘strength-identifiers’ and one third as ‘target-setters’.
• If learners have been working in groups then one or two groups (depending on numbers) are designated as ‘target-setters’ and the rest as ‘strength-identifiers’.

Learners walk around the room looking at the work their peers have produced.

‘Target-setters’ have the job of ensuring that, by the end of the activity, every piece of work has one target written on it.

‘Strength-identifiers’ have the job of ensuring that, by the end of the activity, every piece of work has at least three strengths written on it.

This approach offers a good contrast to ‘Coloured Dots’.

Some learners may not like the idea of using the stickers.

Older classes in particular may view it as something that is not sufficiently mature for them (though I have seen it work wonderfully well with adults).

In addition, by focussing solely on strengths and targets, without the added diversion of the dots, the method can bring a more orderly and academic sense to proceedings.

This can be of particular use when peer-assessing work in preparation for exams.

As ever, it is important to stress to learners that the comments they make should be specific, relevant and linked to the assessment criteria.

This ensures everyone gets something tangible out of the process.

Here are two alternatives, briefly explained, you can also use:

• Give learners post-it notes on which to write their feedback. These can then be stuck onto learners’ work. This approach is good if there is some reason why writing directly onto learners’ work or in learners’ books is not possible.
• Give learners a comment sheet that they place beside their work. This should have two boxes, one for strengths and one for a target. The latter box should be smaller to ensure a high ratio of strengths to targets. As learners go round and complete their peer-assessments, they write their feedback on the comments sheets, instead of in learners’ books.