Formative Classroom Walkthroughs: How Principals and Teachers Collaborate to Raise Student Achievement

by Connie M. Moss, Susan M. Brookhart

Revolutionize the walkthrough to focus on the endgame of student learning. Authors Connie M. Moss and Susan M. Brookhart present the proven practice of formative walkthroughs that ask and answer questions that are specific to what the student is learning and doing. Learn the value of having the observer examine the lesson from the student's point of view and seek evidence of seven key learning * A worthwhile lesson * A learning target * A performance of understanding * Look-fors, or success criteria * Formative feedback * Student self-assessment * Effective questioning Drawing upon their research and extensive work with K-12 teachers and administrators, Moss and Brookhart delve into the learning target theory of action that debuted in Learning Helping Students Aim for Understanding in Today's Lesson and show you how to develop a schoolwide collaborative culture that enhances the learning of teachers, administrators, coaches, and students. They present detailed examples of how formative walkthroughs work across grade levels and subject areas, and provide useful templates that administrators and coaches can use to get started now. Grounded in the beliefs that schools improve when educators improve and that the best evidence of improvement comes from what we see students doing to learn in every lesson, every day, Formative Classroom Walkthroughs offers a path to improvement that makes sense and makes a difference.

Genres: Professional Development

221 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 2015

Reviews

[Adam Gutschenritter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting ideas on how to set up lessons to accomplish and be able to prove learning while still building off of the Understanding by Design model.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like there are some really important ideas in here that I need to just try out in my own classroom, talking with a few close friends, before I go praising or bashing them to the world. Sometimes I thought it was brilliant, and sometimes I felt frustrated.

Brilliant: Focus on student learning rather than on adding more "things a teacher has to do"--new instructional strategies, assessment types, planning templates.... Basically, this approach--"learning target theory of action"--subsumes it all. To what extent did students learn what you targeted in this lesson (therefore you must have a target at the beginning and evidence of student learning at the end, and the way to get there is with "student look-fors," so students have a list or rubric against which to self-assess where they are, where they're going, and how to get there).

Frustrating: (1) The first half of the book seemed to use elementary and middle school examples almost exclusively. There did seem to be more high school examples in the second half. Maybe it works best with younger grades, though it does have it's time and place with older kids? (2) Kind of suffocating, straight-jacket-y feeling at times. EVERY lesson must be structured like this? What about just the time needed to practice and build stamina with complex skills like reading and writing? And yet again...

Brilliant: It does give traction on breaking down and actually teaching, step by step, those complex skills (including critical thinking) that some kids build intuitively and others never really seem to get a handle on completely, and teachers (who are usually the grown-up version of the kids who built the skills intuitively and so can't articulate the steps) just get frustrated.

Like I said, I feel like there are some really important ideas in here that I need to just try out in my own classroom, talking with a few close friends, before I go praising or bashing them to the world. Check my blog over the next year for updates.