Regular readers of this blog know I’m a big proponent of students teaching other students.
I’ve published several posts on the topic, but am hoping readers will point me in the direction of others.
Here is a beginning list of The Best Posts On Helping Students Teach Their Classmates (it’s just a beginning):
The Best Ideas On Peer Review Of Student Writing
Students as Teachers in the Classroom is the headline of one of my Education Week Teacher columns – it’s a four-part series on this very topic!
Teaching Students To Teach (& What School Reformers Are Missing)
“What I Cannot Create, I Do Not Understand”
This Lesson Is Great, Though I’m Not So Sure About Using Khan As A Model
“What If?” Slideshows From My English Language Learner Students
Important Study: “Expecting to teach enhances learning, recall”
How to Use the Reciprocal Learning Strategy is from Cult of Pedagogy.
Statistic Of The Day: Study Finds Students Tutoring Classmates Helps Everybody
Slate Publishes The Weirdest Article About Students Teaching Others, But It Has Some Useful Info
Here’s My Chapter On Elements Of A Successful Lesson, Along With Student Hand-Outs THEY Use To Teach
Here’s a guest post that appeared in Doug Lemov’s blog on peer tutoring.
Doug Lemov has a Part Two guest post on peer tutoring.
Here’s How My Students Taught Their Classmates A Social Studies Unit – Handouts Included
The Art Of Peer Teaching is from 3 Star Learning Experience.
Should Students Explain Their Thinking? Not Always, Research Says is from Ed Week. It’s a helpful study, though I think it uses a “straw man.” It basically says that student self-explanation is effective as long as they’re giving a correct one. It’s difficult for me to believe that many teachers don’t use guidance to ensure that this is the case. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen researchers use straw men to prove their point.
Here’s A Lesson – & A Template – That Intermediate ELL Students Taught Beginners
Want to ace an exam? Tell a friend what you learned is from Science Daily.
The Benefits Of Students Acknowledging Help They Receive From Classmates
“Everyone Is A Teacher” Is A New Engagement Strategy I’m Using & It Seems To Be Working
Is peer feedback the most effective way to teach? appeared on Medium.
Guest Post: Advanced ELLs Write About Their Summer School Experience Tutoring Newcomers
Creating an Effective Book Buddies Program: No More Magical Thinking is from Timothy Shanahan.
Peers Guide 9th Graders Through ‘Make-or-Break’ Year is from Ed Week.
A Fourth Step: “I Do, We Do, You Do” and then “You Teach”
Peer Teaching Through Expert Groups is a video from The Teaching Channel that showcases an ELL classroom.
Guest Post: Using A “Jigsaw” In Math Class
How Our Intermediate ELLs Taught Our Beginner ELLs About World War One Today
Incorporating Students’ Perspectives in the Design of Peer Review Activities is by Adam Loretto, Sara DeMartino, and Amanda Godley. What Do High School Students Think About Peer Review? is by the same authors.
Here Are The Two End-Of-Year Projects Students Do In My TOK Classes
Learning by teaching others is extremely effective – a new study tested a key reason why is from Research Digest.
GREAT REBUKE TO “THOSE WHO CAN, DO; THOSE WHO CAN’T, TEACH”
‘Peer instruction’ makes students more active learners is from The Hechinger Report.
OUR AFTER-SCHOOL PEER TUTORING PROGRAM FOR ELLS – STUDENT HANDOUTS INCLUDED!
Want Students to Remember What They Learn? Have Them Teach It. is from Ed Surge.
STUDY FINDS EVEN “LIGHTLY TRAINED” TUTORS CAN HAVE MAJOR IMPACT ON STUDENT LEARNING
Here Are Step-By-Step Instructions For A Flashcard Activity I Do With My ELL Newcomers
New Research Review Finds Small Group & Peer Instruction Effective
A LOOK BACK: THIS IS INTERESTING: HATTIE SAYS JIGSAW STRATEGY HITS A HOMERUN
A Research-Backed Toolkit of What Works—and Doesn’t Work—in Education is from Edutopia.
Study Highlights Intriguing Combo Of Retrieval Practice & Students Teaching Their Classmates
Improving learning-by-teaching without audience interaction as a generative learning activity by minimizing the social presence of the audience. is a new study that highlights a well-researched finding (that students learn a topic well when they have to teach it), tries to add a new twist to it (finding that students learn more when they create a video about it than when they teach to other students in-person), but totally misses a key element (in the study, it appears they were teaching to people they didn’t know, while in school, they would be teaching to their classmates/friends). The key point doesn’t totally negate their conclusions, but I think it raises an important question about them. Nevertheless, I’m adding this info to this list, because having students teach-by-video could be a nice change-of-pace.
NEW STUDY THAT LEARNING-BY-TEACHING DEVELOPS HIGHER ORDER THINKING SKILLS
This is an excerpt from Edutopia’s email newsletter:
Sometimes a little peer pressure is a good thing, according to a 2024 study that evaluated the effect of peer-to-peer teaching on student brain activity.
One hundred university science students were recruited and fitted with futuristic caps studded with optical sensors capable of measuring neural engagement. The students were then given 10 minutes to digest a multimedia lesson about the Doppler effect before being randomly assigned to either reread the lesson, explain what they’d learned to a classmate, or explain what they’d learned to themselves.
Students who taught their classmates reported the highest levels of social anxiety, and experienced correspondingly high levels of activity in social and cognitive processing centers of the brain—but also performed the best on tests of the material, monitored their thinking more effectively, and included more “elaborative statements” and examples. Researchers hypothesized that the presence of peers made the difference, pushing kids to up their game and “adapt their explanations to the needs of the audience.”
Learning is social, especially for teens. To get the most out of them, periodically let them teach classmates or write letters of explanation to fictional peers.
The big idea: how the ‘protege effect’ can help you learn almost anything is from The Guardian.
Big and Small Strategies to Harness the Power of Peer-to-Peer Teaching is from Edutopia.
Additional suggestions are always welcome.
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Hi Larry,
This is a very interesting post. All through my student years and even now, I have found great benefit from learning and teaching from peers.
You need no introduction on Themeefy, since you had written about us a few months back. I am only thankful for you spreading the good word about us.
I my vision for Themeefy has always been that it will aid in the socratic method of learning, and let peers teach each other. Given any topic or problem, everyone goes out and seeks the truth or learns about it in their own ways. They create their own Themeefy Mags and then come and share it in the group.
This way, through repeating the same topic from different perspectives (because no two Themeefy Mags will be different) and by looking at a wide variety of learning materials (videos, links, tweets, notes) from the web, the entire group learns the topic.
I write to ask your opinion on two things –
First, would you agree to this hypothesis that I made above ? Your word as an experienced educator matters the most and I would love to hear your thoughts.
Second, how can we do something better, to make Themeefy a better peer learning / classroom learning tool ?
Just to let you know, apart from working on Themeefy, we have also started a blog on EdTech, where we share resources on EdTech. You may find this specific post interesting
http://beyondtextbooks.tumblr.com/post/21379516597/technology-in-the-classroom-and-beyond
I will keep an eye on other self-learning / peer-learning tools and let you know. Look forward to reading more from your blog and learning.
Kind regards,
Titash Neogi
When students teach each other, each benefit. See Teaching and Helping Students Think and Do Better.
Another point: What are we to teach? My point is that we need to stress basic principles. See Rational Thinking, Government Policies, Science, and Living. Rational thinking starts with clearly stated principles, continues with logical deductions, and then examines empirical evidence to possibly modify the principles.