Walk-throughs for School Leaders

A Literacy with ICT walk-through is a short (4 to 6 minute) informal classroom/lab/library observation by the school leader. It involves observing student engagement, teaching practices, and learning environment intended to develop student literacy with ICT in the context of curricular outcomes.

The walk-through is followed closely by informal conversation between the school leader and the teacher, to facilitate teacher reflection about how to maximize student literacy with ICT. Record keeping for the walk-through must be simple to complete and provide descriptive feedback to teachers. Some school leaders may also choose to provide teachers with written records of their observations and discussions, commenting on the positives and on possible areas to think about. Walkthroughs are not teacher-evaluation sessions and should avoid evaluative comments. Sticky notes with on-the-spot comments can be attached to the downloadable form below.

Each school staff can modify their own walk-through procedures and develop a set of questions that school leaders could consider during their visits. The questions should be worded to encourage teacher reflection about their practice rather than to elicit a specific answer for the school leader.

Similarly, school leaders and teachers need to decide about the nature of the feedback, keeping in mind that the purpose of the walk-through is to promote reflective dialogue about promising teaching and learning practices related to student literacy with ICT. Below are suggestions for a three-part walk-though. Choose some, but don't try to do all of them in a single walk-through.

Part 1: My Walk-through

What is the context of this walk-through? [time, place, grade, subject(s)]
What did I SEE during this walk-through?
What did I HEAR during this walk-through?
What did I ASK the students?
How did the students respond?

Part 2: Our Conversation

What did I ask myself during this walk-through?
What did I ask the teacher to reflect on?

Part 3: My Reflections

What are my reflections after I met with the teacher?

Walk-through Samples

The files above are available for download in Word format.

To save a copy of these files to your computer,

Right-click on the file title of choice
Select Save Target As... from the pop-up menu
Select the folder where you would like to place the file, click Save