The gallery walk

I learned this technique at a National Association of Geoscience Teachers/National Science Foundation workshop. I have not researched its origins, I just use it like crazy!

The gallery walk is a teaching technique that I use in a variety of situations:

• When I want students to “do the work” in terms of learning content.
• When I want to generate group discussion.
• When I want groups to start to interact around a specific bit of content.
• When I want to get the pulse of the entire course.
• When I want students to see what their peers know about a topic.
• When I want to solicit a bunch of ideas or observations.

I like the technique because it gets students talking to each other and sharing observations in small groups and with the entire class.

I use large, 3M Post-It notes, hung strategically about the room with a different question on each. I have also placed images on the Post-its and asked students to make observations and interpretations about the images. I then break the class into groups of 4 or 5 students, each group assigned to one Post-It. They are given a marker, a short time-limit, and then they are asked to respond to the question(s) at the station. After the time-limit is up, they move to the next station and they can either (a) add new responses or (b) comment on any responses from prior groups. It helps if each group has a different color pen. When the group re-occupies their original station, they are given some time to read the comments and to come up with a brief summary or statement about the best responses to the question. I then go around the room and solicit their summary statements, commenting or asking for further comment from other groups.

Some notes:

• For large classes, I have two or three matching sets of Post-It stations, so that I can keep the group size down at any one station. I then solicit responses from each group at each station as above, but I might jump from sub-group to sub-group to get a more complete set of responses.
• Questions at each station need to be crafted to be sufficiently open-ended that multiple groups can comment or respond; however, they must be specific enough to achieve the goal of the class session (whatever that might be…).
• I have used this technique with photographs at each station, where I have asked students to make observations about what they see.
• I have placed data plots at each stations and asked students to make inferences from the data.

Other examples of the use of the gallery walk (in my classes)

Example 1:

Here’s one that I might use on the first day of an intro geology course:

1. What image(s) comes to mind when you think about a ‘scientist’?
2. Provide an example of a time when you actually had fun doing science. Alternatively, provide an example of a time when you thought science just plain sucked.
3. What do you think geologists actually do?
4. Pick a rock from the bucket below and make at least one observation about it. [I might have two of these, one for each of the two most common rocks that comprise the earth’s crust]

Example 2:

Here’s one that I would use if I wanted students to make observations about some specific features (landforms, rock textures, etc.).

• I place photographs at each station and I ask them to make as many observations about the geological content of the photo as possible. I then cycle them around a second time and ask them to make some kind of interpretation based on the observations.

Example 3:

Students have trouble interpreting data, so I have placed data plots at each station and asked students to make inferences from the data.