Well, I’ve finished the second chapter of Three-Minute Classroom Walk-Through. This chapter sets out the five steps or parts to the walk-through. In the book, each section includes a place for you to record you thoughts or understandings. I didn’t really pay attention to this at the start but as I moved through the chapter, I realized that it was important for me to do this. I ended up going back and recording my ideas, not in the book of course, to see how this was going to work for me. The first step is student engagement. This is to be done without interruption, if possible. This is when you look around the room to see if students appear to be engaged with what is going on. It would take very little time. The thing I noticed was when I walked down the halls, if I stopped by rooms with open doors, it was easy to gage if the students were engaged. I’ve also noticed a pattern to those teachers who have their doors open but that is another thing:) If you cannot do this from looking into the class because of a closed door or frosted glass, they suggest you enter the class, move to the back of the class as quietly as possible. Do not engage students in talk or even make eye contact. The second step is to establish what the objectives the teacher is teaching at this time. This will mean that one will need to be somewhat familiar with the various curricula that are in the building – a bit daunting if you are a K – 12 administrator. This step goes beyond this as it is explained that one does not just want the objectives but then one must become more adept at breaking this down into three parts.
The explanation is quite good and the examples are do give one an idea of what to do. However, as I was reading I thought that having some sort of template just to record some of the information would be a good idea. Later on in the chapter it is mentioned that a principal should work towards not having any sort of notes but be able to do this mentally before creating notes.
Step 3 involves looking for the instructional decisions that the teacher is making. This step also has 3 parts for which one should be looking. I found that this would depend on where you were teaching and what you were observing. However, this was well explained and gave some very clear examples.
The next two steps are less crucial and I’ll be back to talk about them and the overall plan.
MrC
