Leveraging an Audience to Enhance the Quality of Student Work and Learning
I wrote almost all of my forthcoming book in a week in a camper in the mountains, and then I spent the better part of two years revising and editing it. Why did I take so long with it? As humans, many times it is scary to share our work early, but sharing and getting feedback throughout the process not only improves the quality but also speeds up the process. Having an audience typically raises the level of our work overall and also builds skills around giving and receiving feedback, collaboration, and group dynamics that are crucial to success outside the classroom.
I noticed this so much in my debate class. Essentially, students were just writing essays, but while my 9th grade ELA class was struggling to get anything done on their writing, my debate class was a completely different story. They were working together in teams to identify the strongest parts of their argument, gather more evidence than was required, and going through phrases and points over and over to try to improve them. While there were a number of things that contributed to that, one of the most obvious factors was that these students knew their work was going to be seen by others and presented in front of an audience and had actually already been seen by others throughout the whole process - so there wasn’t as much stress involved.
Audience is an incredibly powerful element we can incorporate in our classrooms to help tap into students’ motivation. But what could this look like in a classroom that isn’t debate-focused?
Here are some ideas to help utilize an audience and peer learning to give students a little extra push for quality:
Gallery Walks
Gallery walks can be incredibly simple and an easy way to start this process. Divide your students in half. One half displays their work while the other half walks around and asks questions or gives quick informal feedback.
“My Favorite Mistake” Partner Shares or Presentations
This one sounds odd, but I love how it works out in the classroom. For this, students identify a mistake or misconception they had in the process, and then they identify what they learned from that. They can share this with a partner, small group, or even the whole class. When everyone’s doing it, it normalizes the importance of making mistakes.
Classroom Buddies
This one takes a little planning, but you can partner your class with another class. My favorite is when my 9th grade students partnered with my wife’s 3rd-5th grade class and they wrote stories for each other. It takes a little planning and communication, but it can be a cool way to incorporate an audience.
Tutorial Videos
I love having students create videos that teach a concept we’re working on. Not only does it let them get their creative juices out, but it also really has an authentic purpose in that they can be used to help other students.
Classroom Sharing
As a low-stakes way to do it, you can have students take turns sharing their work to the front of the class. This could be anonymous or not based on the activity. To help with this, there’s a great new FREE tool that just came out called Vivi for Teachers that makes it super simple for students to share their screen wirelessly to the front of the class, with the teacher’s permission of course - whether you have a projector, Interactive Flat Panel, or TV. Imagine having a handful of students sharing multiple approaches to a prompt or even math equation with a few clicks of a button - driving impactful peer collaboration and improving quality all around. Again it’s free and a great solution if you don’t have an easy way to share student work on the screen.
What are some of your favorite ways to leverage an audience to increase the quality of student work?
If you like this concept and want to dive in more, I have a book coming out called Hacking Student Motivation that dives into meaningful changes we can make to our assessment practices to remove some of the barriers to motivation students often feel in school. Click here to join the mailing list to stay up to date about the book release, exclusive perks, and an assessment mastermind group that meets once per month.
