Shades of Gray Gallery Walk

Shades of Gray by Carolyn Reeder is one of my favorite novels to teach. It's such a relatable picture of Virginia after the Civil War because it tells the larger historical issues through the eyes of a boy dealing with the usual things - family, moving, bullying, and the challenge of proving himself to adults. I always need more creative ways for my gifted students to respond to novels, and this past year I tried a  couple of gallery walks for the first time. (I know, I'm way behind the curve on this!) There are so many other gifted strategies that I love, but for some reason I never quite got around to a gallery walk. Well, I finally did, and it went incredibly well! The kids loved the chance to write on giant Post-it notes, I got a comprehension check and some great synthesis-level discussion out of it, and it happened to be a day another teacher was in my room for something and she got to see my kids doing some awesome learning. Yippee!

My classes were huge last year, as usual, so I tried to come up with as many good, open-ended questions as I could. It turned out to be seven, which meant I could divide my kids into groups of 3-4. Although I would have preferred it to be an individual activity, there is something to be said for making students agree on a group answer; ideally everyone contributes ideas, but then the group must prioritize and boil down several ideas into one "best" answer.

Anyway, they did great! These were gifted students, mind you, so someone "creatively" invented reasons to write about cats for every question. It comes with the territory, but overall the quality of answers was wonderful. We had some thought-provoking discussion afterward (even our resident cat enthusiast, because he had to think harder than anyone else to justify his answers!).

Check out my new Shades of Gray Novel Gallery Walk question set! I wish I could post pictures of my students' actual work, because some of it was pretty entertaining, but instead here's a Pinterest photo showing a similar setup:



Here are some alternate ways to use this strategy in both gifted and regular-ed classrooms:

• Pictures - I've done the activity where I put pictures up on the smart board and asked students to use the details they see to make inferences. A gallery walk would be taking things one step further; I could model the skill with one picture, and then students could circulate to each "exhibit" and fill in a line of their inference charts.

• Note-taking - If you're introducing new material, you could post facts, pictures, or vocabulary words and let students record main ideas in their notebooks instead of just copying notes from the board. It's kinesthetic note-taking!

• Student work - Another way to directly involve students in their own learning is to display their work! After they have done a project or completed a group presentation, it would be so cool to let them walk around and peruse their peers' work. If students know their work will be displayed, certain students might be more motivated to do good work, and the ones who devote lots of effort can enjoy letting their work shine!

• Questioning - After introducing a new topic, you could post several of the new terms or concepts and let the kids ask the questions. This is a type of formative assessment, which is a big thing at my school now; it tells you exactly what the kids got and where you need to fill in gaps. It also gives shy students a comfortable way to ask questions they might not have been willing to raise a hand and ask in front of everyone.

• Poems - A teacher I work with created an awesome poetry gallery walk for our inclusion kids! She chose several kid-friendly poems that contained examples of alliteration, rhyme, figurative language, and other poetry terms, and she made a worksheet for students to fill in as they walked around to each poem. They loved the chance to get out of their seats, and it was a great way to make the poetry terms much more accessible for them! Don't tell anyone, but I think they actually liked reading the poems, too.

• Quotes - I think gallery walks would be an interesting strategy for character education. I have a ton of inspirational quotes that I could post around the room (what teacher doesn't?); then kids could respond on large paper with their own perspectives, opinions, and examples. I could even write a specific, open-ended question to go with each quote, like "What is an example of this?" or "Why is this important advice?"

After my success with gallery walks this year, I'm definitely excited to try some of these ideas with my new seventh-graders. If you have used this strategy, please share your tips!