The Power of Instructional Rounds

Apr 26

What do you do as a school leader when you want to build a culture of continuous learning and improvement among the faculty and staff?

Yes, you could bring in a PD facilitator to share new ideas and support implementation… not a bad idea, and Teach Learn Thrive does this all the time, with results that impact student learning.

But what if you really want to build the cohesion of the faculty, showcase the excellence already happening in the school, and build excitement around peer-to-peer strategy-sharing?

The answer, wrapped up in one professional learning experience: Instructional Rounds.

In a recent article, principal Tommy Corrigan shared his experience with Rounds and why it appealed to him for his school: “The faculty responded positively to Ms. Dugan’s enthusiasm for instructional rounds because the practice honors existing experience and expertise, supports collaboration and sharing of expertise and reinforces a culture of learning.”

This process can be done in-house as a school or with educators from other schools visiting a host school’s classrooms.

But is it really worth the effort to schedule classroom visits, procure a cadre of substitutes, and ask teachers to be vulnerable enough to open their classroom doors to colleagues?

This educator wholeheartedly believes in the payoffs of Instructional Rounds, for schools, teachers, and students. The benefits outlined below are pretty convincing:

Benefits of Instructional Rounds for Stakeholders

Applies to both formats: In-House Rounds or Rounds with Educators from Different Schools

For educators who visit classrooms:

Increased awareness of best practices and what they look and sound like. Fresh ideas for instructional strategies, classroom design, etc.
Increased awareness of best practices and what they look and sound like. Fresh ideas for instructional strategies, classroom design, etc.

Faculty collectively:

Greater connections between peers; greater willingness to share ideas, strategies, and tools.
Greater buy-in around future PD, if it is related to any areas of needed growth discovered through the rounds debrief.
Increased efficacy as the faculty examines the feedback provided by the visiting educators.

School leaders and teacher leaders:

Clarity on collective strengths and areas for growth across the faculty. Insights into next steps in professional learning.
Clarity on collective strengths and areas for growth across the faculty. Insights into next steps in professional learning.

In early March, the faculty will debrief with Ms. Dugan by sharing their experiences and reviewing the collated data. Mr. Corrigan hopes “that teachers find this a helpful platform for celebrating effective practices and strategies amongst their peers while also identifying collective areas for growth.”

Can a school do this on their own? Absolutely. Like any schoolwide undertaking, it requires significant planning time and logistical considerations, as well as time for professional learning before and after the classroom visits occur.

Here are some steps to planning instructional rounds at your school.

How do you prepare for instructional rounds?

Determine a focus, also known as a “problem of practice.” This might be a general area of instructional practice that directly impacts student learning, such as rigor, engagement, collaborative learning, etc. Putting it in the form of a question is often appealing, as Holy Spirit School did: “
Conduct a meeting with teachers in which they explore how to collect evidence during the visits, agree upon norms for being in classrooms unobtrusively, and learn about the rounds schedule.
Create and share the rounds schedule. Aim for groups of four teachers visiting about 4 classrooms for about 20 minutes each. Procure substitutes as needed.

What happens after the rounds have occurred?

After classroom visits, participants gather to review the evidence they collected and determine general themes, never mentioning specific classrooms or teachers. Here’s a sampling of themes from a variety of schools:

Nearly 100% of students were engaged across observations, even with whole-class direct instruction.
Students rarely had a chance to choose their task, method, etc.
Teachers “narrated the positive” with students, affirming their efforts frequently
Instruction includes effective scaffolding
Teachers tap into students’ prior knowledge
Most instruction was delivered whole-class
Routines were clear, and students followed them consistently (What to do when finished, no instructional time lost during transitions, no student observed working on work for another class)
Most questions teachers posed were of low cognitive demand (i.e., recall, apply, explain).
Positive student behavior; teachers spoke kindly to students and redirected them quietly when needed

After identifying instructional patterns, participants explore the question, “If I were a student in this school, and I did everything that was expected of me, what would I leave knowing and being able to do?” These predictions intentionally focus on the instructional core, i.e., the place where students, teachers, and content interact.

Schools should compare these predictions to their intended outcomes for students. They might explore the question, “What about our classroom practices needs to change so that the patterns observed in future Rounds might more closely match our goals?”

Schools are recommended to use these predictions to hold conversations and make plans about the next levels of work, including professional learning, expectations for teachers, and more.

How do teachers feel about instructional rounds?

Most teachers I speak with share that they were nervous prior to the rounds starting, as teaching is so personal and it takes courage to let colleagues witness it. However, at the conclusion, nearly all educators anecdotally report that it wasn’t as stressful as they expected. Furthermore, they unanimously agree that the benefits outweigh the temporary discomfort of having classroom visitors. Educators were brimming with ideas and inspiration after visiting colleagues’ classrooms.

Here’s a sampling of how teachers plan to use their insights from instructional rounds in their own classrooms:

Incorporating weekly self-assessments on student learning.

I want to create more small-group center-based learning opportunities in my classroom. This will allow me to work more closely with students, better support their individual needs, and keep everyone actively engaged.

Being more explicit with expectations and having them accessible in multiple ways. Also, intentionally maximizing learning spaces for students to have things to refer to and guide their learning, answer questions, or analyze a task that isn’t just asking my teacher.

Here are the questions teachers who participated were left ruminating on:

How can I reach the deepest level of Bloom’s taxonomy, scaffold, and increase student engagement to make it rigorous and meaningful daily?

Use of project-based cross-curricular tasks in MS

Academic rigor: now I better understand what it is and what it’s not

When to bring in the professionals…

Not sure whether your school leadership has the capacity to take on instructional rounds on your own? Here are a few insights to consider:

When you want the tenor of the experience to feel different from the everyday operations of the school, an outside consultant provides a new voice, perspective, and mood.
When it comes to shepherding the faculty and leaders through the experience and debriefing the rounds, an independent consultant brings both neutrality and the perspective of the many other schools they’ve worked with.
A PD specialist is constantly filtering their work through the lens of best practice instruction without the bias that being embedded in a school can bring.
An independent consultant may help you see blind spots in your planning and illuminate new ideas to address them.

This article in the ADW Parish Times highlights instructional rounds that we conducted in-house at Holy Redeemer School (article on page 6).