The Power of the Gallery Walk

Gallery Walks are a powerful strategy for creating an engaging and student-centered learning environment. By promoting active learning, collaboration, and critical thinking, Gallery Walks can elevate and foster a deeper understanding of the content. 

They are also great tool/strategy to use for a top-notch evaluation! 

Here are (7) Benefits to Incorporating Gallery Walks:

• Active Engagement: Gallery walks encourage active learning and engagement as students move around the room to interact with the displayed materials as well as each other. 

• Critical Thinking: Students are prompted to think critically and analyze the content they encounter during the gallery walk as they respond verbally and/or in writing. 

• Multiple Perspectives: By examining various exhibits, students gain exposure to different perspectives, ideas, and interpretations of the topic through peer-to-peer learning.

• Differentiated Learning: Gallery walks can be adapted to cater to different learning styles and abilities, making it an inclusive strategy for all students. 

• Formative Assessment: Teachers can use gallery walks as a formative assessment tool to gauge student understanding and identify areas where additional instruction is needed before summative assessments. 

• Literary Analysis: In literature or language arts classes, gallery walks can focus on analyzing and discussing literary elements, themes, and characters, helping students develop strong literary analysis skills.

• Reflection and Metacognition: Gallery walks often include reflective components where students evaluate their own learning and thought processes, promoting metacognition and self-awareness.

I have made ready-to-go Gallery Walk Lessons for the following texts: 

The Raven Gallery Walk

The Odyssey Gallery Walk

The Diary of Anne Frank Gallery Walk

Thank You, M'am Gallery Walk 

The Tell-Tale Heart Gallery Walk 

Shakespeare's Sonnets Gallery Walk 

Romeo and Juliet Gallery Walk 

Macbeth Gallery Walk 

Lord of the Flies Gallery Walk 

I Have a Dream Speech Gallery Walk 

The House on Mango Street Gallery Walk 

Frankenstein Gallery Walk 

Annabel Lee Gallery Walk 

The Catcher in the Rye Gallery Walk 

Animal Farm Gallery Walk 

A Christmas Carol Gallery Walk 

Each lesson provides everything you need, including Gallery Walk Guidelines, eye-catching Gallery Walk Posters with significant quotations from the text, a Student Note Catcher, and a comprehensive answer key for a formative/summative assessment.

Time to level-up your instruction with an amazing Gallery Walk! 

Embracing the Hygge!

I'm obsessed with hygge- the Danish word referring to the quality of coziness and comfortable surroundings that invoke an inner sense of well-being.  If you're not familiar, think of the feeling you get sitting by a fireplace wrapped in a blanket on a cold winter’s day while sipping a barista-quality latte.  TBH, I think the hygge-loving Danes are onto something.  Their national obsession with all things cozy is why Denmark is always at the top of the list of the world's happiest countries, in spite of some pretty miserable winter months.  

Maybe it's because I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska or went to college at Valparaiso University in a place affectionately known to residents as Valpo-rain/snow, Windy-ana (Valparaiso, Indiana).  Either way, my Midwest nostalgia kicks in around mid-October and I start to chase winter.  This consists not of skiing, skating, or snow-boarding - but of collecting and poring over L.L. Bean catalogues looking for the coziest, warmest, shearling lined item I can find, which is a much safer activity for me - lest I find myself snowed in for months of frigid hibernation in Nashville, Tennessee.  Not likely for Music City, but one can hope.   

Call me crazy, but I love winter!  There's nothing as beautiful or peaceful as watching snow fall on a quiet street while you're inside having cozy thoughts and deep talks with those you love best.  Lewis Carroll captured it perfectly with this sentiment, “I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”

So bring it on, Old Man Winter!  Let the days get shorter, colder, and darker.  Because then I can embrace the evening of the seasons (guilt-free!) cocooned in my blanket and ridiculously warm socks with a gripping mystery novel, The Crown Season 6 binge, or perhaps just pen a Hygge Haiku....which is what I've been doing (when not engaged in the previous two activities) to really channel the magic of the winter solstice:

Gray clouds quilt the skies

Frozen tears creep down my face

I love wintertime! 

Hot bath, Hot cocoa

Makes bone-chilling cold worth it

Where are my wool socks?

Feverish and sick

Runny nose and frozen toes

Don’t I look pretty?  

Okay...kinda cringy, but hygge haikus are super fun to write!  They demand careful observation, crisp economic language, and perhaps a zany third line of sudden insight if you're the talented-in-verse type.  So, get in your winter snugglies and take pen to paper as you write a hygge haiku.  If nothing else, you'll feel wintery warm and super Danish.    

Click for more Hygge Haiku writing ideas and inspo!