Elevating Teaching Practice: Integrating Sherrington's WalkThrus with SchooliP
Tom Sherrington's WalkThrus have become a globally recognised and highly effective framework for refining teaching practice. These are not just strategies; they are carefully designed, high-impact instructional techniques broken down into simple, actionable steps, supported by clear models and common misconceptions. WalkThrus provide a shared language for effective teaching, helping schools foster consistency and excellence.
The real power of WalkThrus comes from their consistent application and the feedback loop that drives improvement. This is where SchooliP becomes an invaluable partner, offering a seamless platform to monitor WalkThru implementation and directly guide targeted professional development.
SchooliP's robust monitoring module is perfectly suited to embed Sherrington's WalkThrus into your school's quality assurance processes. Its customisability allows you to build observation tools that directly mirror the WalkThru steps, ensuring focused and actionable feedback.
Here's how you can tailor SchooliP for WalkThru monitoring:
Design Bespoke Observation Forms:
Direct Mapping: Create custom forms in SchooliP that directly list the specific steps of the WalkThrus you are focusing on (e.g., "Explanation: Step 1 - Sequence Concepts," "Questioning: Step 2 - Check for Understanding").
Clear Rubrics/Ratings: Attach clear rating scales (e.g., "Mastered," "Developing," "Needs Support") to each WalkThru step. This allows observers to objectively assess the level of implementation.
Contextual Comments: Include ample space for qualitative comments. This is crucial for capturing specific examples of how a WalkThru step was executed (e.g., "Teacher used mini-whiteboards to check for understanding after each small step of the new concept, effectively identifying misconceptions").
Evidence Capture: Use SchooliP's ability to attach various forms of evidence. An observer could upload photos of effective modelling from a lesson, or even link to a brief video clip demonstrating a WalkThru in practice.
Streamlined Feedback and Data Insights:
Real-time Feedback: Observations completed on a tablet or laptop using SchooliP can be shared instantly with the teacher. This immediate feedback is vital for timely reflection and rapid improvement, as opposed to delayed, less impactful traditional reports.
Automated Reporting & Analytics: SchooliP automatically aggregates data from all WalkThru observations. Leaders can generate reports that provide a holistic view of teaching practice across departments, year groups, or the entire school. This allows for quick identification of areas where certain WalkThrus are thriving or where more support is needed. For example, if "Retrieval Practice" is consistently rated as "Needs Support" across multiple observations, it flags a clear school-wide development area.
Trend Identification: Over time, SchooliP's data can reveal trends in WalkThru implementation, helping leaders understand the impact of professional development initiatives and adjust strategies as needed.
Monitoring WalkThrus is only one side of the coin; the real transformative power lies in using the generated data to inform and guide targeted professional development. SchooliP's CPD module provides the perfect ecosystem for this.
Linking Observation Feedback to Personal CPD:
Direct Objective Setting: When an observation identifies a specific WalkThru step as an area for development (e.g., "Needs to refine 'Providing Models'"), this can be seamlessly linked to a teacher's individual professional development objectives within SchooliP.
Action Planning: Teachers can then create concrete action plans within their professional portfolio, outlining how they will work on that specific WalkThru step. This might involve peer observations, attending a workshop, engaging with online resources, or practicing in their own classroom.
Evidence of Growth: Teachers can upload evidence of their learning and application of the WalkThru step, demonstrating how their CPD activities are leading to tangible changes in their teaching practice.
Strategic Whole-School CPD:
Identifying Collective Needs: By analysing aggregated WalkThru observation data, school leaders can pinpoint common areas for development across the staff. If many teachers are struggling with a particular aspect of "Guided Practice," this becomes a clear focus for whole-school CPD sessions or bespoke training.
Curated Resource Hubs: SchooliP can be used to create centralised resource hubs specifically for each WalkThru. This could include video demonstrations, exemplary lesson plans, articles, or links to external training providers.
Tracking Impact of CPD: Leaders can use SchooliP to track how focused CPD on specific WalkThrus correlates with improvements in observation ratings over time, providing clear evidence of the impact of their professional development strategy.
Integrating Sherrington's WalkThrus into SchooliP's monitoring and CPD functionalities creates a powerful, self-improving cycle:
By using SchooliP, schools can move beyond simply knowing about best practices like WalkThrus to actively embedding, developing, and celebrating them, fostering a culture of continuous improvement that ultimately benefits every student.
