Peer review can be a powerful part of a writing unit, but it often disappoints. Students tend to offer vague praise or focus on typos, and the writer walks away with little to work with. A play like The Inspector General, which gives everyone plenty to say, is a good chance to make peer review more substantive.

The key is to give reviewers a specific job. Instead of asking them to comment on the whole essay, ask them to identify the thesis, find the strongest piece of evidence, and locate one place where the analysis could go deeper. Concrete tasks produce concrete feedback.

AI-generated feedback can complement this process by giving students a second perspective tied to the same criteria. When used thoughtfully, it does not replace peer conversation but gives it more material. Students can compare what a classmate noticed with what the tool flagged and decide what to act on.

Structuring the Peer Review Session

A structured session begins with a short model. Show the class a sample paragraph about the officials' fear and practice giving feedback together before pairs begin. This demonstrates the level of specificity you expect and prevents the session from turning into a chat.

• Underline the thesis and restate it in your own words
• Mark the strongest piece of evidence and explain why it works
• Identify one paragraph that summarizes without analyzing
• Suggest one scene the writer could add to support the claim
• Ask one question the essay does not yet answer

Adding AI Feedback to the Mix

One effective sequence is to have students submit a draft for AI feedback first, then bring both the draft and the feedback to peer review. Reviewers can react to the tool's suggestions, agreeing or disagreeing with them and explaining why. This turns the AI comments into a discussion prompt.

It is important to teach students to treat automated feedback as input, not authority. A suggestion to add more analysis is helpful only if the student decides where and how. Encouraging students to justify their revisions builds independence.

Teacher Oversight

Teachers should review at least a sample of the feedback students receive, whether from peers or from a tool. Reading a few sets before the session lets you catch misleading advice and address it with the class. It also reveals which criteria students misunderstand.

Circulate during the session and listen to conversations. When you hear a reviewer give a particularly strong comment, share it aloud as a model. Small acknowledgments like this raise the quality of the whole room.

Turning Feedback Into Revision

Feedback does not improve writing unless students revise. Ask each writer to list three changes they will make based on what they heard, and to explain which suggestions they chose to ignore. This reflective step deepens the learning and shows you how they are thinking.

Collect the revision plans along with the final essays and compare them. You may find that students who make specific, criteria-based plans produce noticeably stronger drafts. That evidence can help you justify the time peer review takes in an already crowded unit.