Project Overview

These first and second drafts of animal illustrations were created by kindergarten students at the Robious Elementary School in Midlothian, Virginia, and are an example of the power of critique and revision even for young students.

At a classroom “Critique Center”, students created drawings and wrote (to the best of their literate ability) about their drawings.  After completing a first draft, each student was asked to seek critique from peers for improvement, suggestions that were kind, specific and helpful. Each student then did a second draft based on feedback from their peers.

In the first set of drawings, of a tiger, students gave the artist the feedback to add more stripes – specifically, add stripes to the legs and a striped pattern on the tail. Doing so, made the second picture more detailed and realistic. The student also got the feedback to separate the eyes from the stripe that originally was going straight through the eyes. In the second drawing the eyes are much more distinct.

In the set of drawings of a lion, student feedback included changing the color from yellow to tawny, and to make the tail more clear (in draft one it looks like a fifth leg)– notice the change that is made in the second drawing of the lion.

The notion of specific critique is exemplified through the work of these kindergarten students. Giving specific feedback is often very difficult for students. These simple drawings offer a good model to students of any age on the type of feedback that is most helpful. In fact, using these drawings as a model with your students can help you establish “put stripes on the legs” as a metaphor for paying attention to detail and giving feedback that is specific and useable.

There is a short video of Ron Berger of Expeditionary Learning Schools speaking about critique and revision using these drawings as examples, at this site: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2K75WO7a70