What did I learn after 3500 classroom visits across three school districts?
- Teachers want and need 4 types of feedback.
- 20-25 weekly classroom visits (walk-throughs) is a good starting point.
- Affirmative feedback is just as strong as corrective feedback.
- Words are not always needed to shift school culture.
I was in my second masters degree when studying these 3500 classroom visits. If you’re interested in the research, I’m sharing the literature that guided these classroom visits.
Also, the key to the classroom visits was a campus-defined set of focal points. These are the “foundation factors” for instruction on the campuses I worked with. Each campus had different instructional foundation factors, but they had these characteristics in common:
- Research/evidence based
- Known in the profession as a best practice
- High yielding across all classes/courses
- Defined by the campus in a collaborative setting
If you are looking to start defining your own foundation factors, I recommend this free online course – Surveying Campus Culture.
And these are some other great resources (from Amazon Affiliate) that capture the ideas behind my research.
The Fundamental 5 is a quick way to start creating a foundation of core instructional strategies.
Leading Instructional Rounds in Education is great for principals or instructional coaches who are ready to start teacher peer observations…but it’s so much more than mere observations.
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