Building Collaboration Skills Through Peer Feedback to Drive Student Growth
- ACP Staff
- Jun 20
- 7 min read
Part 4 of our 4-part collaboration skills series
“If we shield ourselves from all feedback, we stop growing.”
Brené Brown
About this Series
Welcome to Part 4 of our blog series on Collaboration Skills! If you are new to this series, we encourage you to read our previous blogs: Building Collaboration Skills Through Cultivating Relationships that Support Student Learning, Building Collaboration Skills Through Goal-Setting and Accountability in the Classroom, and Building Collaboration Skills Through Collaborative Thinking and Student Dialogue.
Quick Review of the Collaboration Skills
Here are the four domains.
In the first post, we examined the foundational elements of relationship building — trust, connection, and storytelling. In the posts that follow, we explored setting shared goals and collaborative thinking. In this final blog of the series, we explore feedback – what quality feedback is and the roles of both the giver and the receiver in the exchange.
While all of these domains are interconnected, the feedback domain relies uniquely on the successful implementation of the other collaboration domains. Strong relationships enable learners to give and receive feedback with deeper empathy and trust.
Feedback requires purpose, which goals provide. Ultimately, collaborative thinking strengthens communication, broadens a learner's knowledge base, and facilitates the generation of more diverse and creative ideas. As you read on, consider how you will prepare the learning environment using the other collaboration domains.
Feedback to Drive Student Growth
Definition: Seeking input to improve or refine ideas to advance toward a goal
Feedback is essential for learning, but only when it's anchored in purpose. No matter the learning or product destination, feedback helps young people understand where they are, where they’re going, and how to get there. We will explore how to provide high-quality feedback through the roles within the experience.
Feedback is active!
Drawing on the work of Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen in "Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well," in every feedback moment, there are two parties: the giver and the receiver. Young people need to learn the skills within both roles. Here is what that looks like.
Giver – Providing useful feedback with empathy, clarity, and actionable insights |
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To get you started, let’s examine a simple framework for creating high-quality feedback. In The Ethic of Excellence, educator Ron Berger describes the feedback guidelines he gave his students to create beautiful work: be helpful, be kind, and be specific. Let's calibrate on what these mean.
Helpful feedback is understandable to the receiver. It advances the work in a meaningful way based on success criteria or a specific request from the receiver.
Specific feedback is actionable because it is detailed and evidence-based. For example, it references the work itself and the reason for the feedback (e.g., In paragraph 3, I like your topic sentence because it uses unexpected words that engage the reader.)
Kind feedback is delivered in a caring way and focuses on the work rather than the person.
Young people will need help to get started. Here are sentence stems for three different types of feedback:
Celebration | Question | Suggestion |
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Articulates what is working and why | Rooted in curiosity, these give the receiver something to think about | Ideas offered for consideration |
I like how you... because... | Have you considered…? | Maybe you could try... because... |
It stood out to me when... because... | What would happen if...? | One idea I have is to... so that... |
I appreciate how you... because... | Can you tell me more about...? | I wonder if... would help you... |
Once young people know how to craft feedback, it is time to consider how to deliver it. Begin with modeling tone. Show students how your voice can convey curiosity and care rather than judgment and warmth rather than criticism. In addition to using sentence starters, as shown above, practice the feedback.
First, do so with work that doesn’t belong to anyone in the class. This depersonalizes the experience, allowing students to practice with less worry. Then, move on to examining real student work. We recommend modeling feedback using a piece of student work from the classroom. Ask the student for permission first and then remove their name. Young people can then practice giving feedback, knowing the receiver will see it.
The final step is to practice having students give each other feedback directly. Provide guidance and redirection as needed! Note that this requires several social and emotional skills. Learn more about this in a future blog.
Receiver – Specify the feedback you seek and embrace responses with an open mind, viewing them as avenues for growth |
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When you think about feedback and how you teach it to students, you likely invest the majority of your time in delineating how to craft and deliver it. How much time do you spend on how to receive and respond to feedback? Coming back to the work of Stone and Heen, we’d like to offer these insights into being a receiver.
Feedback is a skill. We need it for growth, and it can be challenging to respond to feedback because it is connected to our perceived vulnerabilities.
Triggers can block feedback. While there is much a giver can do to provide quality feedback, each of us carries three types of triggers. The receiver must practice self-awareness first (what is coming up for me) so that they can respond appropriately.
Truth Triggers: Caused by the substance of the feedback.
Relationship Triggers: Caused by the relationship with the person giving the feedback.
Identity Triggers: Personal reactions based on who we are.
There are ways to handle feedback. As the teacher, model how you receive feedback. What are the thoughts that go through your mind? Some things you may talk through are:
Distinguish between feedback and our reaction to it. In the heat of the moment, this can be trickier than you think!
Understand what is being said and what isn't. Sometimes, we add a story that isn’t there. Practice identifying "just the facts."
Seek specific examples. When the feedback doesn’t feel clear, we need to ask the giver to clarify.
Ask for suggestions, not just criticisms. Quality feedback should be specific and offer suggestions and guidance that move the work forward. If that is not present, the receiver should learn to ask for clarification.
Establish feedback boundaries. It is important to teach young people that we don't have to accept all feedback. The receiver can consider the feedback in terms of quality (was it useful feedback), alignment with personal goals (does this help me improve the work in the way I want or need), and the giver's credibility and intentions.
Receiving feedback well requires curiosity, emotional regulation, and the ability to sort through what’s helpful. Once students develop these habits, they’re better prepared to engage in meaningful self-reflection and growth.
The Role of Self-Reflection
Feedback doesn’t start or end with a conversation. It begins and ends with reflection. Help students build self-awareness by asking them to name their learning goals and reflect on what kind of feedback would be most helpful. Support their social awareness by encouraging them to notice whose insights they value and why. After feedback, prompt learners to identify one takeaway to act on and one question they still have. These small steps turn feedback into meaningful progress.
4 Classroom Routines That Support Growth-driven Feedback
Practices that work
Feedback is more than a skill. It is a collaborative practice that strengthens learning and relationships. When students learn to give, receive, and reflect on feedback, they develop self-awareness, social awareness, and the ability to grow with others.
This is especially true in Project Based Learning (PBL), where feedback plays a critical role in helping students make meaningful progress. As students move through investigation cycles, they need ongoing input from peers and adults to revise their thinking, refine their products, and stay aligned to their learning goals. Without regular feedback, projects can easily lose direction or become a checklist of activities or tasks rather than a coherent journey toward deeper learning.
The strategies that follow provide simple ways to bring these roles to life in your classroom and enable students to engage with feedback in supportive and impactful ways both inside and outside of projects.
Quick Note As you review the strategies, you may notice some are aligned with additional categories. We made some choices for the purposes of this series. In some cases, we showcase a novel application of the strategy; in others, we go with the most obvious use case. For example, the Circle of Viewpoints activity can be used for collaborative thinking and feedback. Use these strategies in ways that will advance your specific learning goals and deepen students' ability to give and receive feedback. |
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A thinking routine that helps learners examine an issue or idea from a perspective other than their own. While it is often used in collaborative thinking, it is presented here as a tool for providing feedback.
A feedback strategy in which learners review the work of others and provide constructive criticism. It provides multiple perspectives for assessing work and determining the next steps while also fostering a culture of transparency and growth.
A structured process for reviewing work and providing meaningful feedback. The prompts are scaffolded so that learners take the feedback deeper with every phase. The final phase of the thinking routine asks the presenter to thank their audience, which is an opportunity for them to reflect on the benefit of receiving the thoughts of their peers.
A rapid protocol where learners help one another to generate multiple possible revisions in a short period of time. This can be particularly useful when learners feel stuck on a particular idea. Using this protocol creates an atmosphere where each learner recognizes that anything can be improved, and teamwork can lead to the best thinking.
Prefer everything in one place?
Make Feedback a Catalyst for Growth
Investing in feedback is an incredible gift to learners. When we teach students to give and receive feedback with purpose, we help them see learning as a shared journey, not a solo act. Having an ongoing feedback practice deepens students' metacognition and affords them a chance to practice success by revising their thinking. Young people can produce beautiful, high-quality work and learn more deeply.
Throughout this four-part series, we’ve explored the building blocks of effective collaboration: relationships, shared goals, collaborative thinking, and now, feedback. Each domain strengthens the other. Together, they create the conditions for deeper learning and more connected classrooms. Keep trying, keep refining, and come back to ACP’s blog for more tools and inspiration to grow your students' collaborative skills and your own.
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