by Debbie Yonke, Coordinator, Quality Assurance in Learning
In Visible Learning For Teachers, Hattie shares research regarding the roles of peers and social support. Not only is it important for students to have friends at school, but positive peer relations and classroom climate can actually impact learning. “Peers can influence learning by helping, tutoring, providing friendship, giving feedback, and making class and school a place to which students want to come each day” (Wilkinson, Parr, Fung, Hattie, & Townsend, 2002 as quoted by Hattie, p. 79). This can look many different ways in our classrooms, but recently we saw an example of allowing peers to have a positive influence at Reed Academy in counselor, Jill Wilson’s 6th grade study skills classroom.
If you look closely at the picture below, you will notice that each student is posed in front of the white board. As each student sat in the “hot seat,” their peers came up and wrote positive character traits all around them and then the picture was captured. Jill shared that her goal in this activity was to activate the students’ thinking on what character traits they would want to be known or remembered for. She really wanted the students to let go of negative labels and let the “Real Me” stand out. This activity was the last of several lessons that allowed students to focus on not only their own positive character traits and strengths, but those of others. Thanks for allowing us to share this, Jill!
