Learners benefit from peer-assessment for a number of reasons.

It gives them an opportunity to:

• Consider someone else’s work. This broadens their understanding and expands their frame of reference.
• Explore the criteria against which their work, and that of their peers, is being judged. This helps them better understand what they need to do to be successful.
• Come to an assessment that makes use of the criteria and which, therefore, is predicated on the process of evaluation. This means they are making judgements, based on the criteria against which their own work is being judged. And that again will help them better understand what success entails.

Pupils who receive peer-assessments also benefit from the process.

This happens when they receive a judgement that:

• Relates clearly and explicitly to the criteria against which their work is being judged.
• Indicates what they have done well and why it is good. This helps them better understand the success criteria and confirms their existing knowledge of what they need to do to be successful.
• Does any of the following: indicates how they can improve and why this would be an improvement;  indicates a target that they should aim to meet in future work and explains why this will be of benefit; indicates and explains an improvement for the current piece of work and a target for future work. All of these give learners guidance on how to improve and, in the process, further insight into the success criteria that underpin whatever it is they have been doing.

In an ideal peer-assessment, learners give and receive praise, improvements and targets that are specific, relevant and closely linked to the success criteria, whatever they might be.

Here are three simple ways you can help your learners focus on what truly matters when they are doing their peer-assessments:

• Strategy One

Make learners aware of the criteria they will be judged against before they start their work.

For example, mark schemes, success criteria created by the teacher, success criteria created by learners, exemplar pieces of work or general principles.

This serves two purposes.

First, it helps learners target their efforts while they are doing the task.

Second, it primes them to focus on this when they come to do their peer-assessment. This means their peer-assessment should be more closely matched to what it is you want them to do.

• Strategy Two

Model the giving of praise and the setting of targets.

Learners need to know how to do this if they are to be successful with their peer-assessments.

Unlock the process by walking learners through how you would assess a piece of work.

Show them how you apply success criteria when you are assessing learner work. Give them hints and tips they can use during their own peer-assessments.

When modelling the process, think about how you can verbalise the strategies and approaches you have developed during your time as a teacher.

• Strategy Three

Demonstrate what unhelpful or irrelevant feedback looks like.

For example:

• I love the colours you used!
• Really, really nice work
• Your presentation is super

Explain why this kind of feedback is unhelpful or irrelevant. Emphasise that useful feedback helps the recipient to learn.

You might want to put examples of good and bad peer-assessment feedback on your wall, or display it on the board while learners go about the task.

This means learners have a reference they can use as a scaffold.

It also means there is a model you can draw learners’ attention to if their feedback is veering towards the irrelevant, helping them to change course.

Don’t underestimate the benefit of creating a contrast between good and bad examples. It can really effectively fix in learners’ minds what it is you want them to focus their efforts on.

Three Stars and a Wish

Three stars and a wish is one of the most common peer-assessment techniques around.

Part of its popularity comes from the fact that we can instinctively see how it focuses learners’ minds on the things that matter.

That is, giving three stars and a wish.

Or, to put it another way, three things that are good and one thing that could be improved.

The structure guides the peer-assessment.

And it is easy for younger learners to grab hold of. The language is both accessible and inherently positive, making it an excellent introduction to peer-assessment.

There is also the benefit that the activity sounds more like a game than what it actually is – the act of marking someone else’s work.

(Although perhaps marking someone else’s work is just a game anyway, in a philosophical sense, at least.)

Ask learners to read through, watch, look at or listen to the work of their peer.

Explain that they should be aiming to identify three things for which they can award ‘stars’ and that these should be really good things about the work.

Indicate that they should also be on the lookout for one thing they wish could be done in the future to make the work even better.

You might like to provide learners with a pro-forma they have to fill in.

This can include images of three stars and a wand (to represent the wish).

Alternatively, and if learners are writing out their feedback, you can ask them to draw three stars and a wand in their partner’s book and to write their comments beside these images.

‘Three stars and a wish’ is also a good technique to use when something is being performed or presented in front of the class.

Before the presentation or performance begins, tell your learners that you will be coming to them for three stars and a wish at the end.

This means they need to be thinking about peer-assessment while they are watching.

Another option is to pick out four learners in advance and to indicate that you will be asking them specifically for three stars and a wish.

A nice aspect of doing peer-assessment in this way is that the learners who have presented or performed experience public praise.

They also get the chance to respond to any improvement that is suggested.

One more possibility is to provide the entire audience with a ‘three stars and a wish’ pro-forma.

Learners complete these while the presentation or performance takes place.

At the end you can collect them in and give them to the performers/presenters, who can look through them at their leisure.

You can always rename ‘three stars and a wish’ if you want as well.

For example:

• Three goals and a penalty (can you score the penalty next time?)
• Three lions and a cheetah (can you catch the cheetah?)
• Three wins and a draw (can you turn the draw into a win?)

The final point to note is that what we said earlier about helping learners provide high quality feedback applies here too.

While the structure of ‘three stars and wish’ does a lot of the work for us in successfully directing learner effort, it doesn’t do everything.

We still need to ensure learners understand the difference between useful and unhelpful or irrelevant feedback.

We still need to ensure they have clarity over what the success criteria are and how they can use these to do their peer-assessments.

And we still need to ensure learners know what a good peer-assessment looks like, and how they can make sure their ‘three stars and a wish’ marries up with this.

You can use the three strategies outlined earlier to help you achieve this.