Peer Feedback with Structure
Give students criteria and a protocol before they assess each other's work. Topping showed peer feedback improves learning for both, but without scaffolding it becomes empty praise.
The strategy, as published
Exactly as it appears on the card
Part of Source & Direction in 03 Feedback, where it sits alongside its neighbouring strategies, the infographic and the thinking for the whole area.
Why you might use it
The problem it may help with
Handing assessment over to pupils without structure produces what Topping's research predicts: empty praise, vague niceness, the occasional unkindness. With criteria and a protocol, peer feedback becomes learning for both the giver and the receiver.
There is a second benefit hiding in it. Judging another pupil's work against criteria is practice at the very comparison Sadler says pupils must learn to make about their own.
What it might look like
One version of it, in a classroom
Pupils swap lab reports with a fixed protocol: check the report against two named criteria, mark where each is met, and write one question for the author. No general comments allowed. The teacher then samples the peer feedback itself, because the quality of the judging is evidence too.
Try it
A way to begin
Start with one criterion, not a rubric. Pupils check a partner's work against a single shared criterion and mark exactly where it is or is not met.
What to notice
Reading what happens
- The language pupils use about work: criteria words appearing in their talk is the structure doing its job.
- Whether feedback stays on the work or drifts to the person, which pupils find as hard as adults do.
Things to think about
Before and while you use it
- The protocol carries the strategy. Without it the activity tends to revert to swap-and-be-nice within a lesson or two.
- Pupils need feedback literacy before they can give feedback, not just receive it. Modelling what a useful peer comment looks like is worth doing at least once first.
The wider thinking
Where the evidence sits
Topping's work on peer assessment found benefits flowing to assessor and assessed alike, provided the structure holds; the structure is not optional scaffolding but the mechanism itself. The card’s attribution stands as published: Topping.
The fuller picture, sources included, is in further reading and evidence for Feedback.
Keep exploring
Where next?
Back to this strategy in 03 Feedback, across to what you're trying to improve, or into all 144 at once.
Want to take this further?
Support is available
Pedagogy First gives you a starting point. If you want support exploring how approaches like this can work across your school, trust or professional learning programme, that work is available.