Peer Review Insights and Lightning First-Draft Rubric

 So--I've looked at folks' peer review sheets, and I'm mostly heartened.

 A surprising number said it was harder to review someone else's work than to have their own reviewed. I had expected the opposite. I loved reading how many students took the task very seriously: "no skimming allowed in peer review!"

I also like how many noted that reading other people's work helped them to see how to make their own work better. 

I still have reservations about the free-riders--the folk who didn't read all the plays, don't care to review someone else's work in detail, etc. But this experience convinces me the peer review is a good idea.

NOW--I gotta burn through 40+ rough drafts in the next day or so. I let everyone know not to expect detailed responses (that's what the peer reviews were for). My thinking right now involves a rubric-style clump grade:

• 50 points (A): This is a fully done, good-faith effort to produce as polished an analysis as the writer can deliver. All questions are answered fully, all word counts are met, all writing reasonably proof-read.
• 40 points (B): This is more or less done. A few minor parts are missing (ex: there's a few missing parts of a single question) or deficient (ex: one or two sections do not meet minimum word counts). The writing may not have been as carefully copy-edited as it could have been. There may be a significant misunderstanding about some aspect of the prompt.
• 30 points (C): The is the bare minimum that could possibly count as "a completed first draft."  Possible problems include one or more of the following: three or more sections do not meet minimum word counts; more than one question is either missing or incomplete; the writing has substantial grammar/spelling problems; the prompt is only loosely followed.
• No points: The analysis does not qualify as a completed first draft but is more like "a placeholder for a first draft to come," "a desperate dumping of random information unrelated to the prompt," or "an apology for not writing/completing a draft." Problems could include more than two sections missing; word counts ludicrously low (ex: a sentence or two as placeholder for a section); little evidence that the writer even read the play and/or the prompt carefully. 

I hope to be able to get through these first drafts quickly--tomorrow. We'll see.