The Power of Peers

Even the best teachers ask themselves how they can motivate students to do well. One potential answer: Engage students in looking at—and learning from—one another's work. In classrooms that adopt these practices, students examine the efforts of their peers, discuss what is good and what needs to be done, and set out to improve their work.

What follows is a look into three such classrooms. In one case, students take part in a public critique of their classmates' work. In the two others, students respond to anonymous efforts in math and writing, but what's important is that the work has been done by students just like them, not drawn from arbitrary examples in a textbook. The point in common: When we capitalize on students' natural interest in their peers' work, we can foster motivated classrooms where they reach for—and meet—high standards.

A First Draft