Using Gallery Walks in Primary Grades

Using Gallery Walks in Primary Grades

Hey, y'all! One of the best things I tried this past year in my first grade classroom was gallery walks. At first I thought this would be total chaos, but then I tried it and it was absolutely amazing!

If you're not familiar with gallery walks, it's when student work is displayed around the room--like an art gallery--and students check out each person's work at their own speed. There's no pressure to present or anything. 

So...as we finished up our animal adaptation unit, my students wrote about an animal of their choosing and described an adaptation that animal has to keep it alive. They drew a picture and wrote a couple simple sentences. (Sorry I forgot to get pictures!) Then, I hung the pictures around the room and gave students this response sheet. 

Why was it the best thing ever? 

    1) It gave the kids something to hold in their hands which totally kept the chaos under control. 

    2) They had a purpose for wandering around the room. It wasn't just to walk as fast as possible!

    3) It made them THINK about what they were looking at. And, 

    4) Their responses were forced to be productive. No mean comments allowed. 

I designed this so that even my emergent readers and writers could still be successful. There's plenty of space to draw their thoughts if they need to. And by limiting it to four responses, most students were able to complete their ideas in a reasonable amount of time. And if you have some advanced kids, there's no reason they couldn't do a second response page. 

You can grab a free copy of this gallery walk page in my TPT store here. I'm always adding new resources so be sure to follow me on TPT for all the latest and greatest. 

I hope this post was helpful and gave you some new ideas for your classroom. Have a wonderful week and I'll talk to you soon. 

Stay cozy,