Gallery Walks in the Classroom

Since my grade one and two students LOVE to share their ideas about everything, I decided to try an idea from Lori over at Teaching With Love and Laughter. 

 Here's what we did:

1. After a directed drawing lesson where we created pictures of owls, I collected all the pictures and called everyone to the carpet. I demonstrated, using a few examples, how to notice all the details and talk about what it reminded me of. 

2. Next, I put one owl drawing randomly on each student's desk, and then sent them all back to study the one that happened to be on their desk. I asked them to take some time to decide their favorite things about the picture. Then, I gave each student a sticky note to write down a nice comment; since we have been working all year on giving compliments, they are very good at filling buckets this way!

3. The final part was to have all students walk around to view each other's work. Just as Lori described in her post, the conversations that took place were wonderful! Of course they were all excited to read the note left on their own picture, but they also wanted to see everyone else's art and read their notes as well! It was such an authentic, meaningful way to practice reading and writing - and so simple! I invited our principal to observe, and he spent 20 minutes walking around, and left a nice note on each student's work as well. How nice! The kiddos were just thrilled. 

The next day we tried it again with Mona Lisa pictures we had on display, and again later with our Valentines day writing about friendship. Each time, students were completely engaged, kind with their comments, and perhaps even a bit more eager to challenge themselves, knowing that others will be admiring their work.