Students are uncomfortable sharing feedback with other students. Sharing feedback with one’s peers can be quite stressful, especially if one feels that feedback was critical or negative.
Meet with students ahead of section. Let students know about the plan to hold Group Feedback Discussions well ahead of time, and invite them to come and meet with you privately about any concerns (about the feedback itself or about sharing it with other students). Such meetings not only give you an opportunity to work with students to find a way of sharing feedback they are comfortable with, but also gives you an additional opportunity to clarify and discuss your feedback with the student.
Have students select specific pieces of feedback to share. This will allow students to not only avoid discussing assignment problems they are more uncomfortable sharing, but also pushes students to prioritize issues with their writing.
Students don’t understand some piece of feedback. Sometimes in the process of discussing, or preparing to discuss, feedback with others, students will realize they aren’t actually sure what some specific item of feedback means.
“Float” between groups and provide clarification as needed. Encourage students to call you over if and when confusions arise, and be ready to work with the small groups to arrive at a better understanding of what the relevant piece of feedback means. If you are the one who gave the feedback, doing so has the added advantage of creating more classroom openness: just as you are asking students to be open about issues in their writing, you are being open about your feedback.
Meet with students ahead of section. Not only can (as suggested above), pre-section meetings provide an opportunity to attend to student concerns about publicly sharing feedback, but it can also provide you an opportunity to discuss the feedback and address any points of confusion before they come up in section discussions.