At South Valley Middle School the teachers use one plan time a month to visit three to four other classrooms in the building for about 10 minutes each. After the walkthrough process, they debrief their findings with their own content team. This experience keeps our teachers connected to the other content areas and let's all of us see various instructional practices being used. Here are three of the highlights:
- Collaboration: Many classrooms had the students working in small groups to grapple with a content idea. The teachers posted questions for the students to consider with the content being used.
- Teacher to Student Conversations: Teachers were talking to individual students/groups about the work they were doing. Conversation pieces included, "explain your reasoning behind solving the problem", "why do you think others agree with the text", and "talk me through the work your group has completed".
- Nonlinguistic Representation: Students were diagraming and drawing the content they were learning, putting their own visual reference to the important details of the unit being taught.
The best part of the walkthrough process for me as a coach is the debriefing. I truly love hearing a teacher say they want to try doing what they saw in a class, then working with them to modify it to fit their curriculum. Teaching is about sharing, learning, and growing our own practice to benefit the students.
It might be getting colder outside, but the South Valley classrooms are keep our students' minds warm and active!
