Teaching Walkthrus: 5 Step guides to instructional teaching
Updated: Dec 6, 2021
Tom Sherrington and Oliver Caviglioli have teamed up to present 50 essential teaching techniques, each with five clear and concise illustrations and explanations. It forms a unique repository of key teaching methods, valuable to any classroom practitioner in any setting.
If you haven't hear of Tom and Oliver I highly recommend you do some research into the things they are doing in education. They have now sold over 100,000 copies of both books and have developed a subscription model to help support schools in using the tools for professional learning. More and more countries around the world are accessing the instructional resources. A few Western Australian schools have accessed Tom and Oli resources and have begun their journey in implementing professional learning for their teams of teachers.
They have also begun to create webinars- some recorded- that every new subscriber can access to gain an overview and others are live. Often Tom and Oli hold monthly live Q&A to talk to people about how things are going in their contexts.
You can download Walkthru Cluster Building powerpoint tool which allows you to copy and paste the Walkthrus to form clusters in any combination. These can also be used to help you lead your performance development conversations with leadership but also help your co-hort team identify instructional techniques that your would like to embed across your year group, varying year groups or whole school.
Oliver's website can be accessed by hovering over the following and clicking -> OliCav
Tom's Teacherhead Blog can be found hovering over the following and clicking -> teacherhead | Zest for Learning… into the rainforest of teaching
Together they have developed a performance development resource to support teachers in targeting effective instructional techniques and to help support schools in building whole school practice and instructional techniques.
When accessing their website (WALKTHRUs) there is the opportunity to engage with powerpoints, notes, videos and graphics to support teachers reflections and application of effective instructional techniques.
The Teaching WalkThrus materials have been designed to provide a central set of connected resources to build on schools professional development. They are designed for use in primary and secondary schools, in further education settings.
Behaviour and relationships
Curriculum planning
Explaining and modelling
Questioning and feedback
Practical and retrieval: Building secure long-term memory and fluency
Mode B Teaching: Delivering a range of learning experiences to deepen and extend learning
ECF WalkThrus Booklet.pdf - Google Drive
The team has also worked alongside Emma Turner to create an Early Career booklet to provide a mapped focus to support mentor/coaches in supporting early career teachers. Graduate teachers are encouraged to highlight on the above link booklet or here (ECF WalkThrus Booklet.pdf - Google Drive) to identify what instructional tools and skills they want to build on. I highly recommend if you are a 1,2 or 3rd year out teacher you check them out. Even if you are a senior teacher you will also find this booklet a great resource to reflect on within your own practice and also to use to support your colleagues around you!
Sometimes within hard to staff schools, hard to teach schools or even high performing schools it can be challenging to have the opportunity to really get stuck into finding/using/adapting/developing new techniques for instruction. The resources developed can really help you as an individual teacher, team or whole school. If you are lucky to have a school setting where your school has the capacity to employ curriculum/instruction coaches you can always use the tools to help support GROWTH conversations when helping your colleagues develop and extend their tool kits. If you are not lucky enough to have an employed instructional/curriculum coach this tool and resource will be of huge benefit for you.
Remember... it is you the classroom teacher who has the greatest impact on your students success within education! You go this!
Has your school or team accessed some of Tom and Oli work to support professional learning and professional conversations around effective teaching practice?
Do you use the resource created to reflect on your instructional techniques?
Or do you use it as a check in?
Or do you use it for something else?
Have you come across their work before?
How do you share your professional readings with colleagues?
I would love to know! Please share this post to early career teachers or other colleagues you know that are nerds for instructional techniques like myself :)
Ms Burke (Tash)
*Please know that I am not affiliated in anyway with Tom and Oli. I am only sharing their wonderful resource in the hope it helps others to target and reflect on their practice.