Lesson 43: Digital Witness Exhibit, Peer Review and Revision

Display the Essential Question: How can readers evaluate words and images for accuracy, perspective, and ethical use? Ask students to share any questions that arose during their “tech check” homework from the previous lesson. Provide on-the-spot answers as feasible and note other questions for follow-up. Students then engage in a Turn-and-Talk routine and discuss the prompt in preparation for their peer-review.

Turn and Talk

Say these Directions: At this point, your presentation drafts are works in progress. If you feel uncertain about your draft, today’s class provides an opportunity to identify some ways to strengthen and refine them. Use the perspectives offered by your partner to improve your work. Take a moment to think about the prompt, then use a turn and talk routine to share with a peer.

• Think about your presentation draft as it exists right now. What aspects or details do you think are strongest currently, and what is an area where you would like to refine or improve your presentation?

  • I am happy with the selection and captioning of my images, and I think I have a decent script. However, I am not sure if I provide enough details for an audience to understand my external source. I’d like to check this in peer review and fix it if I need to.

Connection to Today’s Learning

• Say: Today, we are going to conduct a peer review, as we’ve done before in this unit. However, this time, we will do several shorter rounds of review and focus on different aspects of the presentation each time. If you have specific questions about how your presentation is being received, make sure to ask your peers to share their observations.

Prepare students for peer review by modeling examples of constructive feedback. Explain that in effective peer review, we make it clear that we are critiquing the presentation and responding to specific details of its content and structure, not criticizing the person who made it.

Offering Constructive Feedback

Say these Directions: Peer review can be challenging because we are offering and receiving constructive criticism. When giving criticism, think about how it will be received and understood. Let’s prepare for peer review today by evaluating some contrasting examples of feedback.

• Say: You made the captions too short. / I think the captions could use more detail on the time and place the photos were taken.

  • The first example may be a true statement, but it is very broad and sounds like an accusation. The second example is more helpful because it offers a specific criticism of the captions and explains how they could be improved.

• Say: In your narration, you talk too fast and mumble a lot. / I had trouble understanding some of the narration for the page on farming. It might be helpful to shorten the script so you can slow down and enunciate.

  • Again, the first example might be a reviewer’s real, legitimate reaction to the presentation. However, it is unhelpfully broad, and the “Here’s what you did wrong” framing is likely to distract from the reviewer’s advice. The second example points out a specific place where the issue is apparent and suggests a specific way to fix it.

• Say: Now, let’s work together to reframe the following examples of criticism.

• Say: How might you reframe the following example: The presentation mentions Harry Ueno but does not give any information about who he was or what he did.

  • I noticed that you mentioned Harry Ueno in this section. Could you explain more about who he is and why he is important to your story?

• Say: The presentation feels unfocused and wanders away from its core topic.

  • I had trouble understanding how some details related to your topic. [Give an example.] Could you show how they fit in with the rest of the presentation?

• Say: The narration repeats a lot of information from the captions without adding much new insight or interpretation.

  • I noticed that some information in the captions was also discussed in the narration. Would it make sense to cut some of those details from the narration so there is more room to interpret and explain?

Connection to Today’s Learning

• Say: Because we are doing multiple rounds of review, you may see a variety of approaches to the presentation task, and you may hear a variety of responses to your own presentation. Let’s do our best to follow the same norms we would in any academic discussion by listening carefully and focusing on ideas, not individuals. For the reviewer, that means providing focused, helpful feedback on specific details of the presentation. For the presenter, that means listening with an open mind and not taking critical feedback personally.

Students use the full 30 minutes to conduct three rounds of peer review. Each review round should take about eight minutes, with one to two minutes after each round for students to make sure that they understand their notes and make micro-revisions if possible. The exact procedure will depend on your class’s technological resources, students’ level of readiness at this point in the unit, and how you are allocating the unit’s Flex Days. Partners might exchange presentations and access them simultaneously on tablets and computers, take turns presenting using the same tablet or computer, or share paper copies and provide narration either live or as a transcript. If time permits, reconvene the class and discuss some of the insights they gained during the review.

Learning in Action: Peer Review (W.7.5, SL.7.1, SL.7.3) (30 minutes)

Say these Directions: Next, you will participate in three rounds of peer review in pairs, each focused on a different aspect of the presentation draft:

• Round 1: Use of Evidence & Synthesis of Sources

• Round 2: Essential Question Connection & Ethical Storytelling

• Round 3: Clarity and Engagement

Use the 3-Column Chart to record the feedback you receive during each round.

• Say: Before you begin: In peer review of a presentation, your job is not just to give kind feedback, your job is to give helpful and specific feedback to help your classmate improve. That means you need to understand and trace the speaker’s argument and evaluate its soundness. You need to identify the claim, examine the reasoning that connects evidence to the claim, and decide whether the evidence is relevant and sufficient.

Use these questions to guide the peer review process in each round:

Round 1: Use of Evidence & Synthesis of Sources

• Does the presentation use specific details from its sources to illustrate its point?

• Does the presentation synthesize sources, not just describe them separately, by showing:

  • What do the sources have in common?

  • What distinguishes the perspective, style, or content of the sources?

  • How do different sources speak to a common issue or topic?

• Do the captions tell me what I need to know about each source?

• Does the narration go beyond the captions to tell me how the sources are connected to each other and to the wider context of Japanese American incarceration?

Round 2: Essential Question Connection & Ethical Storytelling

• • Does the presentation clearly connect to the Essential Question? (“How can readers evaluate words and images for accuracy, perspective, and ethical use?”)

  • Can I identify specific points where the presentation discusses:

    • the perspective of the sources?

    • the accuracy of the information that the sources provide?

    • any emphases or omissions that affect the sources’ accuracy?

• Does the exhibit practice ethical storytelling by:

  • honoring survivor voices and representing perspectives accurately?

  • avoiding reducing people to symbols or statistics?

  • captioning images in a way that accurately reflects their content?

Round 3: Clarity and Engagement

• Is the narration clear and easy to listen to?

• Can I understand what the speaker is saying throughout the presentation?

• Does the presentation engage and hold my attention?

• Does the presentation reveal what is interesting and important about its topic?

• Through this presentation, do I gain new facts or insights about:

  • the subject of Japanese American incarceration?

  • the presenter’s chosen topic or question?

  • what is “seen” versus “unseen” in the selected sources?

Round 4: Technology, Citation, and Argument Evaluation

Argument Evaluation

• Is the main claim clear and easy to understand. .

• Is the reasoning connecting evidence to claim was sound, did the conclusion follow logically from the evidence?

• Was the evidence relevant to the claim, does it actually address what the presenter is arguing?

• Is the evidence sufficient, is there enough of it to convince me, or are there gaps in the argument?

Technology

• Did the presenter use technology to produce and publish the presentation (e.g., slides, embedded media, recorded narration)?

• Are sources both linked (clickable URLs) AND formally cited in the slide deck?

• Did the presenter use a collaboration tool (shared deck, linked notes, comment mode) to integrate peer feedback into their draft?

Remind students to follow good listening practices, ask follow-up questions, and take notes for use in further revising their presentation captions and narration.

➤ Additional Student Support: Writing Scaffold

If students need more support with refining their presentations, hold separate “mini-conferences” with selected students during the peer review rounds. Have them share their presentation drafts and offer feedback on such areas as:

• The language and clarity of the narration, including the ease with which the spoken audio is understood.

• The accuracy and level of detail of the captions, noting especially any captions that might mislead or confuse the audience.

• The presentation’s alignment with the Essential Question.

• The presentation’s degree of focus on the student’s chosen question or topic.

Students reflect on their experiences during the peer review and discuss their ideas as a class.

Say these Directions: Take a moment to review the prompt and think about some ideas you’d like to share.

• Ask: Think about your experience in the reviewer role during the last activity. What is one thing you saw in a peer’s presentation that gives you an idea for refining your own presentation?

  • One of my peers used color backgrounds in his presentation that were similar to the style of Seen and Unseen. I thought that made the photos stand out well and will consider doing something similar.

  • One of my peers asked questions for the audience to think about at the beginning of her narration. I thought that was a good way of getting viewers interested, so I might try that too.

Instruct students to complete the following:

• Use the peer feedback you received in class to refine your presentation draft.

Emphasize that the actual presentation will be shared on the next day of class, and provide instructions for how they will submit their materials (e.g., emailing you the presentation assets, sharing them via courseware, or bringing a physical drive). If instead you are using Flex Days for further in-class work on presentations, remind students of the adjusted timeline.