February 22, 2022

Reach back into the deep recesses of your teaching career to those gallery walks. They still work…the students were engaged.

My students are working on brainstorming a response to literature essay after reading our latest novel. I wanted them to come up with as many ideas as possible to choose from when selecting evidence for their essays. I decided to get them into groups of two in order to brainstorm as many solutions as possible. They then posted their notes to the walls around the classroom and walked around adding notes to their own papers.

Materials: Any would work but I did find these dry-erase graphic organizers at Target at the beginning of school. I bought a small set of thin dry-erase markers with little erasers on the caps. They worked perfectly.

Alternate: Because I had a limited number, I had to erase each class’s responses for the next class. If you give each group a blank piece of copy paper, the brainstorms could stay up and/or be used indefinitely.

Unexpected: Because I needed to reuse the graphic organizers for the next class, there was an urgency to get their notes completed before everything was erased. Hence, engagement in the activity was at a high (great for spirited middle school boys).

What I might do differently next time: Think, pair, share. I might ask the students to create their own lists first, share them with a partner and create the class product, and then ask them to add to their notes later. This time, I did not do the individual part.