Model Critiques as an Instructional Practice

RON BERGER: Well, the the funny thing about Austin’s Butterfly is that the original Austin’s Butterfly itself was a critique by peers in a first grade classroom in service of improving Austin’s drawing. So the point of it was not an instructional lesson that was broader for the whole class. It was six kids helping Austin make his drawing better over a series of small critiques. As he as he redrafted, he would repost it, the small group would critique again. I happened to be present in that classroom in Idaho and I was so captivated by how he listened to their critique and actually made substantive strong changes in his work based on what they said each time. I thought this is amazing. So I captured it. Was in the video that was something very different. It’s not Austin and it’s not his class. It is using that protocol to get kids thinking about and teachers thinking about, what would it be like if we look together at a class about the dimensions of what we’re aiming for and thought about how do we make it better in that genre? So in the frame of scientific illustration, those kids are sort of learning how to work as a group to make things better. And so the power of that video is not to make that particular piece better, but to think about how can we use critique as an instructional method in our class room. And basically, I think we usually think of critique in one way, which is your kids write a piece, they meet with their critique partner, that makes that piece better. And that’s a great use of critique. But a whole different use of critique, which we don’t exploit hardly at all, is if you want your kids to write a great essay, the best way to do it is to bring in a few great essays written by kids and have your kids critique them. Not to make those pieces of work better, but to elicit what a great essay is and argue about it and fight about it and debate about it and name the features of a great essay based on a model. And through that process of eliciting, oh we think this it needs this at the beginning, it needs this in the body, this is you know this surprise is a powerful thing reflecting it resonance within the piece like you can get very sophisticated and understanding not what five paragraphs should be, but what the actual texture of a great essay is. What makes your essay sing and powerful. That happens only with a model and only with a deep discussion. It’s way more powerful for kids to do that through a critique where they’re looking for strengths and looking for understanding it than it is for a teacher to stand in front of the class and say here are the 10 things you need to think about to make a great essay. Doesn’t create a vision in kids’ head, it’s not activating their brains in their own process. So, what Austin’s butterfly does is create an example for teachers of how critique can be a class lesson of anything we need to teach kids, whether it’s how to do science labs or how to write a persuasive essay or how to do any engineering projects and robotics. Works better, I think if you’re looking at strong models of that and then you’re critiquing them together in terms in a critique lesson that gets kids actively thinking about what are we aiming for here and what are the criteria for quality if we reach them.