One Hour of Walking Classrooms

I learn so much from walking classrooms and would like to take additional opportunities to document my visits. Here is a quick summary of what I experienced this morning.

-Office Conference room. Faculty Forum this morning where the discussion focused on evaluation and feedback of committee provided by staff. Our facilitator helped us come up with themes, focusing questions and ideas for moving forward.

-Learning Center. I spent some time looking at student work. One student chose to represent the school organizational structure using a cell model. Interesting thoughts about how we are organized.

-Supervised Study. Some students working on individual assignments. One taking a math quiz. Another working on comparing different edits/drafts of a Christmas Carol using an online resource. 

-English Class. Students discussing process for reading and commenting on work using the YWP blog. I took a shot of a prompt on the back whiteboard that sounded like fun.

-Math Class. Students were taking an assessment. All seemed very focused.

-Math Class. Students were viewing instructional videos created by their teacher. The teacher is creating the videos on the iPad/Vimeo so that students have an additional resource for math instruction. When I was visiting students were viewing a video and offering feedback to the teacher using a GoogleForm. Great modeling of use of tech and seeking feedback.

-English Class. Class read-aloud of Romeo and Juliet. They were at the part were Romeo kills Paris. Some great discussion and questions from the class.

-English Class. Discussion of the Globe Theater and conditions the audience experienced. Teacher had the students get up from their normal seating arrangement and "occupy" a floor tile during his discussion. Fun experience that really seemed to add a lot to the discussion.

-Social Studies. Class was viewing a film about a nomadic group and their living conditions and culture. I happened to walk in during the piece about their Yurts and the butchering of some livestock. I decided not to take a picture...

-Tech Office. Multi-tasking as always. Our tech folks were responding to "tickets" and setting up a Mac Mini for the new display that is up in the 6th grade hall. Excited to start uploading student work for regular digital display.

I hope to provide a similar summary on walk-through classroom visits on a regular basis. You really can get a great sense of what is happening at RMS in a relatively short amount of time. One of my goals for this organization is to get all of us engaged in these learning walks as we have much to learn from each other.