Peer Review Guidelines

Content
Topic
What is the overarching topic of the paragraph? (i.e., what is the writer talking about?)
Topic Sentence
Is there a topic sentence?
What is it?
If there is no topic sentence, what could they do to create a topic sentence?
Is it easily identifiable?
Is there a clear topic and a controlling idea? (Remember: topic is the idea being discussed; controlling
idea is your opinion/point of view on the topic.)
What is the topic?
What is the controlling idea?
Is it discussable?
If it's not discussable, what could they do to make it discussable?
Is it broad enough to encompass all information in the paragraph?
If it's not broad enough, what could they do to make it broader?
Body

Does the body support the topic sentence?

If it doesn't support the topic sentence, what could the writer include to provide support?
Does the writer use specific details, examples, and/or facts?
What are they?
If not, what should the writer add?
Does the sentence have unity? (Meaning, are all the sentences related?)
If not, what is lacking? Or perhaps there is information that is unrelated to the rest of the topic?
Is there a concluding sentence?
What is it?
If not, do you have any suggestions for a concluding sentence?

Organization
Is the paragraph logically organized? (i.e., does it flow?)
Does the write use transitional expressions, repetition, synonyms and substitutions to guide the reader?
Does the paragraph have coherence?
If yes, how is it organized? (i.e., time order, space order, importance order)
If it's missing coherence, what could the writer do to give the paragraph coherence?
Punctuation/Mechanics/Grammar
Do you see any sentence fragments, run-on sentences, or comma splices?
If yes, how would you fix them?
Are the commas, semicolons, and periods used correctly?
Is capitalization used correctly?
Is there sentence variety? (Do they have a mix of simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex
sentences?)
Overall
What do you think of the paragraph?
Do you have any additional suggestions for the writer?