Formative Classroom Walkthroughs: How Principals and Teachers Collaborate to Raise Student Achievement

Connie M. Moss & Susan M. Brookhart

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About This Book

Revolutionize the walkthrough to focus on the endgame of teaching: student learning.

Authors Connie M. Moss and Susan M. Brookhart present the proven practice of formative walkthroughs that ask and answer questions that are specific to what the student is learning and doing.

Learn the value of having the observer examine the lesson from the student’s point of view and seek evidence of seven key learning components:

• a worthwhile lesson
• a learning target
• a performance of understanding
• look-fors, or success criteria
• formative feedback
• student self-assessment
• effective questioning

Drawing upon their research and extensive work with K–12 teachers and administrators, Moss and Brookhart delve into the learning target theory of action that debuted in Learning Targets: Helping Students Aim for Understanding in Today's Lesson and show you how to develop a schoolwide collaborative culture that enhances the learning of teachers, administrators, coaches, and students. 

They present detailed examples of how formative walkthroughs work across grade levels and subject areas, and provide useful templates that administrators and coaches can use to get started—now.

Grounded in the beliefs that schools improve when educators improve and that the best evidence of improvement comes from what we see students doing to learn in every lesson, every day, Formative Classroom Walkthroughs offers a path to improvement that makes sense—and makes a difference.

See the book's table of contents and read excerpts.

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About the Author

CONNIE M. MOSS, EdD, is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Foundations and Leadership in the School of Education at Duquesne University and director of the Center for Advancing the Study of Teaching and Learning. She served for 25 years as a K–12 educator, spending 17 of those years in early childhood, elementary, and middle school classrooms. She continued her public school service as an educational leader of multidistrict, regional, and statewide initiatives in curriculum planning and assessment. 

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SUSAN M. BROOKHART, PhD, is an independent educational consultant based in Helena, Montana. She has taught both elementary and middle school. She was professor and chair of the Department of Educational Foundations and Leadership at Duquesne University, where she currently serves as senior research associate in the Center for Advancing the Study of Teaching and Learning in the School of Education. She has been the education columnist for National Forum, the journal of Phi Kappa Phi, and editor of Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, a journal of the National Council on Measurement in Education.

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