Reflective Learning Walks

The Power of Reflection

Reflecting is fundamental to performance and learning in individual, community, and organizational situations. Psychological studies in both the behaviorist and the cognitive traditions have demonstrated repeatedly that improvements in performance depend on instructional reflection loops. If you don't know what is effective or ineffective, you're not likely to get much better.

(d= .75 in Haitte’s Barometer of Influence)

*Please contact me (Melissa Stone) if you wish to participate in a Reflective Learning Walk!

What They Are:

•Reflective Learning Walks are scheduled walk- through opportunities where educators conduct brief classroom visits to observe student learning related to an agreed upon focus area/ goal.

•Educators calibrate their understanding related to the focus area/goal, observe student learning, discuss evidence of student success related to the focus area/ goal, reflect on instructional practice, and provide transparent reflections to all stakeholders.

• Reflective Walk Protocol:

1. Pre-brief classroom visitations– Clarify and calibrate focus, confirm schedule, and determine roles and responsibilities

2. Visit classrooms– Observe student learning related to focus

3. Debrief classroom visitations– Discuss evidence, Reflect on instructional implications, and make instructional commitments

What They Are NOT:

•Reflective Learning Walks are not an opportunity for educators to evaluate teachers on their teaching or to evaluate principals on the quality of their school.

•They are not a time to collect data related to a checklist or rubric. Data is not collected and housed in a post-observation report.

Leadership Team Reflective Statements: 2017-2018

-Students were successful and engaged in learning when instruction was chunked and they had parameters in place to help guide their pair-share and classroom discussions.

-Students were successful when a question was given and students thought and then shared with a partner before being called as a non-volunteer AND when the teacher asked at least one to two student for their answer for the same question.

-The students will benefit from having teachers participate in reflective walks organized to observe certain classrooms that get to conversation and discourse.

-Students benefited from having a graphic organizer to write down their ideas, thoughts, relflections, or content information.

-Students were engaged when given frequent choices to discuss with their peers what they were learning on working on.

-Students benefit from clear routines that provide them with multiple opportunities to engage in academic discourse.

-When students were given the opportunity to discuss what was learned, they were better able to complete the assigned task becuase they had an opportunity to develop a plan, formulate their thoughts, and to complete the task.

-Students were successfully able to meet objectives though the use of academic language and opportunity to engage in meaningful, higher level discourse.

Leadership Team Reflective Statements: 2016-2017

-When given the opportunity to discuss, debate, compare content in student groups, students are more cognitively engaged.

-When given the opportunity to respond to predetermined questions, students were able to provide responses in complete sentences which included academic language.

-When given the opportunity to provide additional elaboration/explanation/ reasoning, Students demonstrated a deeper understanding or an insightful unique perspective on the topic.

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