Observations of buddy feedback in action

“Maybe you could add a bit more detail - explain why, like why the giraffe's tongue is blue”

"I really like your sentence starters - they are different and you haven’t repeated them."

"Check it makes sense because some of it doesn’t - you could read it aloud to yourself."

"You’ve described the monster really well and you have lots of different sentence starters."

"You could use more punchy sentences."

"It is good that you have paragraphs but sometimes they are very long. When you re-craft you would make sure you only have important information."

"You didn’t just guess, you’ve put it good information."

Did you enjoy giving feedback? 

"It was good to share my writing with someone new. I usually only share with the teachers. I enjoyed giving the feedback because it felt when when I had ideas about how they could make it better."

Buddy feedback criteria

With a small group of students we had a really great discussion about what is important when giving feedback and why it is useful.

Student voice:
Why would we want to share our writing with a buddy?

* If I'm not sure about something I can go show an expert and get some help
* At the moment I only see my own writing - it would be good to read other peoples writing too. It might help to give me some more ideas
* I'll see things in my buddy's writing that might help me or make me look carefully at my own writing
* I could learn from my friends

Success criteria: (when sharing writing)

* Author reads their writing aloud
* Buddy gives one or two things that they like about the writing - Be specific
* Give 1 next step
* Ask them what they want to work on