Teachers have long used peer review to spread feedback across a classroom. Students read each other's drafts, offer comments, and learn something about their own writing along the way. With a novel as layered as Catch-22, peer review can help students test their interpretations against other readers.

The reality is that peer review often disappoints. Students are cautious about criticizing classmates, so they offer praise or vague suggestions. They may also lack the knowledge to spot weaknesses in an argument, especially in a book as tricky as this one.

AI feedback has its own strengths and limits. It is fast, consistent, and tied to a rubric, but it lacks the shared context and human connection of a peer's response. Used together, the two can cover each other's blind spots.

The sequence below shows one way to bring both into a unit.

Start With Rubric-Based Feedback

Begin with AI feedback on the first draft, focusing on the structural issues that a rubric can identify: thesis clarity, evidence use, and depth of analysis. This gives students a baseline and a set of concrete revision targets. It also means that peer reviewers are working with drafts that have already been improved.

• Students receive rubric-based feedback on a first draft
• They revise based on the top one or two priorities
• Partners exchange revised drafts with a focused review sheet
• Reviewers respond to questions about ideas, not grammar
• Teachers read final drafts with a lighter set of comments

Give Peer Reviewers a Clear Task

Peer review works best when reviewers have specific questions to answer. Ask them to highlight the thesis, mark where the evidence is strongest, and note one place where they were confused. These tasks are concrete and do not require students to judge the essay overall.

For a Catch-22 essay, you might also ask reviewers to say whether the writer explained the satire or only described it. That question directs attention to the most important analytical move in the unit. It also gives writers something specific to fix.

Teach Students to Use Both Kinds of Feedback

Students need help deciding what to do when feedback conflicts or overwhelms. Teach them to prioritize by asking which comment would most improve the argument. A revision plan that lists what they will change, and what they will leave alone and why, encourages thoughtful decisions.

Discuss the differences between the sources openly. A peer can tell you where they got lost as a reader, while a rubric-based tool can tell you where the essay falls short of the criteria. Both are useful, and neither is the final word.

What This Means for Your Grading

When students have already gone through two rounds of feedback, the drafts that reach you are stronger, and your grading becomes faster and more focused. You can spend time on the deeper interpretive issues that neither peers nor software will address. That is a better use of your expertise.

GraideMind can handle the initial rubric-based pass, giving each student prompt, specific comments while keeping you in control of the final grade. The result is a unit where students receive more feedback than any teacher could provide alone, and where your own comments carry more weight because they come at the right moment.