Documenting Walk-throughs

Blog 12 of Spilling Ink Challenge

More on walk-throughs...
I've explored various ways of keeping track of walk-throughs. This past year I used a spreadsheet for each quarter. On the left collumn were all teacher names (organized by grade level, then alphabetically, because that was easiest for me). Then there were 9 collumns...one for each week of the quarter. As I completed a walk-through for each classroom I would record the date in the box for that teacher's row. I liked being able to visually see how many classrooms I had been in for the week or to see how long it had been since I was last in their room. Since my goal is to get into at least 15 rooms a week, I would try to get into each room every other week. This spreadsheet made a great visual for this. I would also circle the date if I gave feedback (verbally or written).

I recently skimmed a book while sitting in Barnes and Noble and want to try something new that I saw. This year I will have a simple spreadsheet with 2 collumns. The left with all staff names and the 2nd collumn being much larger so that I can record a date and some information about the walk-through (ex: "guided reading groups, all on-task... asked tchr about word work center). I will complete a walk-through for each and every teacher, before I complete a walk-through on another teacher and record on a different spreadsheet. I plan to print off 15 of these spreadsheets with the goal of getting into each classroom 15 times next year. I think this system will hold me accountable for not "shying away" from any classrooms (as I've previously discussed) and give me a tool to record what I'm seeing.