Peer Review - Royal Review
A few years ago, I was struggling to engage my freshmen. For some reason, these freshmen were a whole different breed of student and I needed to think of something with a bit more pizzaz to get them to stay focused.
We had done some pretty extensive lessons on the writing process, as well as basic expository writing structure, but as I started to look through some of their first drafts early in the school year, I realized that we weren't applying what we had learned about expository structure and putting it into practice. Some of the basic elements were there, but I could tell many students were struggling to include all of the needed information (especially in the body paragraphs).
Basic Overview
The activity is broken into four stations: The Crowd, The Court, The Kings & Queens, and The Divine. Each station is responsible for reviewing a specific part of the body paragraphs in the essay. (You can check out the instructions sheet I had students keep in their binders HERE).
The Crowd - focus: labeling and quote introductions + citations
The students in The Crowd are responsible for looking to see if students have all of the required parts of a good expository body paragraph (do the body paragraphs have topic sentences? do they include specific examples? are the quotes being introduced?). The students in The Crowd can give feedback on the quality of work if they'd like, but their main focus is labeling (in this case, highlighting) and checking for quote introductions and correct citations.
The Court - focus: specific examples in the body paragraphs
Once the papers have been labeled by The Crowd, The Court will inspect the writer's example sentences. In my classroom, I teach example/evidence/commentary - though I believe some teachers may call these concrete details (or something similar). The examples should be easy for The Court to find since they have been labeled by The Crowd. For the papers that do not contain examples, I encourage The Court to look at their evidence and see if they can decipher what the example should be.
The King and Queens - focus: commentary
Once the papers have had their examples checked, as well as their quote introductions + quotes/evidence, The Kings and Queens will look at the commentary to see if the writer has explained how/why this relates back to the topic sentence. Additionally, Kings and Queens will give more feedback on grammar (if they have time).
The Process
When I ran Royal Review in my classroom, I set up the three stations in long Thanksgiving-style tables. Students would bring in a hard-copy of their first drafts (see below for what to do with students without first drafts). I would tape the Student Instruction Sheets to the tables so that students could be reminded of exactly what to focus on while they were editing.
ALL of the papers would start in The Crowd. If I had a group of students who were not particularly organized, I would choose a leader that makes sure each student at the table has a paper to be reviewing. Each first draft needed to be checked by TWO Crowd members before moving onto The Court. Students were pretty good at figuring out how to pass the papers to the next station (sometimes they would choose a runner from the table, other times they would just get up and pass it over themselves). The process repeats similarly with The Court and The Kings and Queens (two people read, then the paper is passed on).
Since all of the papers start with The Crowd, initially The Court + Kings and Queens don't have anything to work on. Depending on the class, I typically had students work on a grammar or writing handout that was homework for that night (I tried to make the handouts relate to something that a majority of the class struggled with like deleting first and second person, or quote introduction practice). Most students, even The Crowd, would be about 80% finished with the homework before class ended. If we didn't use the free time for a handout, I would let them work on something for another class or an easy "brain break" activity (honestly, it depended on the class and the time of year).
Once the Kings and Queens had finished reviewing papers, they pass them to The Divine (which was me, hah). The Divine is totally optional - just depends on how much you want to give feedback before having the students work on a second draft. Early in the process, I would walk around the classroom to each table, checking to make sure students were following directions and answering any questions they had about the instructions or specific papers. Once a few "finished" papers had piled up on my podium, I would hop over and give a quick check to make sure everything had been covered. Often, I would leave more specific feedback in regards to voice, tone, and grammar.
Things to Keep in Mind
Student Grouping - when placing the students into their stations, I tried to keep in mind what would be the right amount of challenge for them. Typically, my lower students (who struggled with writing in general) were placed in The Crowd, since most of their job was simply to identify specific parts of a body paragraph. My average to high-average students were placed in The Court, and my should-probably-be-in-honors students were Kings and Queens. The group sizes will depend on your class size, but I typically my stations were:
The Crowd - 12-14 Students
The Court - 12-14 Students
Kings & Queens - 4-5 Students
Level and Time of Year - I typically only use this peer review activity in the first semester and ONLY with freshmen. Classes who have a good understanding of basic expository writing structure would find this activity mundane and probably not helpful - its intent is for students who need to master expository structure.
Additionally, the first few "essays" my freshmen would write were not full five-paragraph essays. Typically, we would write the introduction paragraph together in class, students were required to have two body paragraphs and a conclusion. Early in the year, I don't focus too much on the conclusion, because having solid body paragraphs (in my opinion) is a much more important building block. As the year progresses, we switch to different peer review activities that assess the essays more in-depth because there is more authentic student writing. That being said, there's nothing stopping you from making some modifications to what the students are looking for at each station, or perhaps creating a new station (The Jesters, The Handmaidens, The Choir, etc).
If you're looking for a great way to teach the expository writing structure, you can check out my powerpoint HERE (blog post coming soon!).
My biggest tip is to HAVE FUN WITH IT - the more goofy and excited you are about this silly station review, the more the freshmen will roll their eyes (but secretly love it). I hope you find this resource to be helpful and that your students become better writers!
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