Watch a video of PeerTeach

Pick your topics and then assign a short diagnostic to students. PeerTeach will use the resulting data to create classroom pairings and provide customized tutoring materials. Simply print and pass them out at the start of class for a 20-minute peer tutoring session.

Student-led review in 5 steps

Step 1
Train effective helpers

Students engage in a single, 45-minute self-guided training to learn 3 core teaching strategies: eliciting information, probing for reasoning, and revoicing peer thinking.

Step 2
Assign quiz to measure mastery

Choose Common Core topics that students learned last week, last month, or last year. Preview and edit PeerTeach’s assessment items for each topic, and then assign a short quiz to students in our gamified platform.

Step 3
Match pairs based on data

View mastery levels in a simple stoplight (red-yellow-green) format. PeerTeach will use the data to create pairings for all of your chosen topics. You can even specify which students should and shouldn’t work together.

Step 4
Print materials to facilitate tutoring

Edit and print materials customized for each pair, and then pass them out in class for a 20-minute peer tutoring session. Each set of problems contains helpful tutoring tips and carefully curated problems of increasing difficulty.

Step 5
Measure growth and collect feedback

Students log in to PeerTeach to take a 6-minute exit ticket and rate the interaction with their partner. You get growth data to celebrate with your class, and PeerTeach learns how to create even better pairings for your next session. Over time, PeerTeach will give every student the opportunity to tutor.

Teachers use PeerTeach to…

Fill gaps from last year

When: Start of the year or semester

Frequency: 1-2x per week

Problem: Mr. Hernandez teaches 7th grade math. His incoming students learned topics like percentages and ratios last year, and a solid understanding of those topics is crucial for success in 7th grade. He knows they will forget a lot of this over the summer, and he doesn’t want to start September with a week of review - it’s boring for students who already mastered the content, and he already has a lot he needs to cover.

Solution: He picks 5 important 6th grade topics and assigns a diagnostic on PeerTeach. It takes 35 minutes in class, and finds that, on average, 30-60% of students remember each topic. Every Monday, he matches up students for a peer tutoring session for 20 minutes at the start of class, finishing with a short post-assessment.

Impact: Within 6 weeks, average mastery has improved to about 80% on each of topic. One student, Jack, was initially confused by percentages, and now, he’s teaching it to his peers. Mr. Hernandez continues to teach grade-level topics without worrying whether gaps from last year are holding his students back.

Provide immediate support

When: Immediately after teaching a topic

Frequency: 1x per week

Problem: Ms. Walker teaches 6th grade math. Every Friday, students take a quiz on what they learned that week, and these quizzes make up a sizeable portion of their grade. This week, Ms. Walker taught students how to write ratios and use them to solve real-world problems. She has a sense of which students struggled, but she doesn’t have time to provide 1-on-1 help before the quiz.

Solution: On Thursday, she assigns a short quiz on both topics for homework. Students log on to their chromebooks at home and get immediate feedback on whether they’re right or wrong. Students who master the topics unlock tutoring worksheets that they’ll use to help their peers. When Ms. Walker gets to school on Friday morning, she uses PeerTeach to match up students on the two topics and prints out worksheets for each period. During the first 20 minutes of class, students engage in peer tutoring.

Impact: When it’s time to take the quiz, students feel more confident, and tutors feel they have learned even more deeply by teaching. On Monday, Ms. Walker celebrates students’ accomplishments on the quiz, shouting out tutoring pairs that demonstrated strong growth. They can’t wait for their next tutoring session at the end of the week.

Review for a big exam

When: Weeks leading up to the test

Frequency: 2-5x per week

Problem: Ms. Daley teaches 8th grade math. The state exam is coming up for her students, and there are a number of topics that kids have forgotten over the course of the year. She has two weeks of review scheduled before the test, but she wants students to interact with the content in a different way so that it doesn’t just feel like boring review.

Solution: She gives a diagnostic on the 8 most important topics from this year. It takes 50 minutes in class one day, and she is quickly able to see that students are performing better on some topics than others. Every day for the next two weeks, she chooses three topics with low mastery and matches up students for tutoring at the start of class. Short post-assessments after each session immediately measure student growth. She starts off class the next day with shout outs to students for mastering material and helping their peers. PeerTeach even allows her to do fun competitions between classes about who can grow the most after each tutoring session. 

Impact: Kids’ excitement is palpable, and there is clear momentum leading up to exam day. When the big day comes, Ms. Daley is delighted to see her students thanking each other for all the help they received over the past two weeks. They walk into the exam confident and even a bit excited to show off their knowledge.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • PeerTeach currently has assessments and tutoring worksheets for all mathematics Common Core State Standards for grades 6-8. We’re building out content for high school in spring 2023.

  • Students need 15-20 minutes to complete a peer tutoring session. If you choose to give a post-assessment to measure growth (recommended), students will need an additional 7 minutes.

  • PeerTeach looks at three factors:

    1. Mastery: students with mastery are paired with those who need more help on a topic

    2. Compatibility: both teachers and students can indicate their preferences for how students are paired

    3. Balance: if a student has not been a tutor after many sessions, PeerTeach will try to find a topic where they can help someone else

  • Our system takes note of how often each student has been a “coach” and “player”. If someone has been assigned the role of player for several consecutive sessions, PeerTeach will find a topic they’ve mastered and give them the opportunity to be a coach.

  • Our foundational training takes about 40 minutes and teaches three core teaching moves. This training has been tested with thousands of students through our research at Stanford.

    Additional trainings take roughly the same amount of time. Teachers often choose to assign them for homework as “skill boosters” throughout the year.

  • Teachers typically choose 1 of 2 options:

    1. Students take the training before engaging in their first tutoring session. This can be done for homework, in class, or during a study hall period.

    2. Students take the training after 1-2 tutoring sessions. This way, students have more context for why it’s important to adopt the teaching moves in the trainings.

  • It’s easy to set up your first PeerTeach session! Here’s an example where a teacher uses PeerTeach to review for an important exam on Friday:

    • Tuesday prep period: Teacher chooses three important topics from upcoming unit exam and assigns a short quiz to students on the PeerTeach platform. (10 min)

    • Tuesday evening: Students complete the short quiz for homework. (25 min)

    • Wednesday prep period: Teacher reviews mastery, matches students on the platform, sends notifications, and prints worksheets and post-assessments for tutoring. (15 min)

    • Thursday in class: Teacher passes out worksheets and students engage in tutoring. At the end of the session, students take post-assessment via paper and pencil. (25 min)

    • Thursday prep period: Teacher feeds post-assessments through school scanner and emails PDF file to peerteach.org. PeerTeach grades the assessments and updates mastery. (5 min)

    • Friday in class: Teacher uses data dashboard to celebrate student growth and build confidence before the exam. (5 min)

  • You can indicate this on the platform, and PeerTeach will avoid pairing those students for all future matches.

  • When you match across 3 or more topics (even if all three have <50% mastery), PeerTeach is almost always able to find enough tutors with mastery.

  • The only part of PeerTeach that takes place during class is the actual tutoring. It’s just 20 minutes, and most teachers choose to replace their traditional review lessons with tutoring. You can assign trainings and assessments for homework.

  • You can assign post-assessments. These can take place on the platform or as a paper-and-pencil exit ticket immediately after their session. You can scan and email exit tickets to PeerTeach from any school printer with top-feed scanning capability, and PeerTeach will do all the grading for you.

  • Yes! We’ve built a remote tutoring environment for students. The tutoring worksheet is pre-loaded onto a shared whiteboard for students.

  • We’ve found that students learning English often benefit significantly from peer tutoring. Having a concept re-explained in different words by a peer can be very helpful, and if you pair students who both speak the same language, they get to relearn material in their primary language.

  • One group will have three students - one coach and two players.

  • You can mark students absent on the teacher platform, and PeerTeach will immediately use mastery data to find a pair for the extra student to join.

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