Circulate the Room
With the technique Circulate the Room, you take steps to ensure you monitor the practice of every student at least once during a supported practice opportunity - no student is missed out.
Why use this technique?
Circulate the Room can help every student feel their learning matters and give you a stronger body of formative information than if you had only monitored a small sample of students.
Sometimes, teachers can fall into the trap of letting some students be ‘hidden’ (they don’t get as much interaction with their teacher as their peers) or letting students be too independent in their learning too early. Supported practice, with teacher monitoring and feedback, is an important step in the learning sequence before independent practice.
Notes and tips
Because of the time constraints of lessons, it is unlikely you will be able to give feedback to many individuals as you are circulating the room. Instead, you can stop the class after you have monitored everyone’s performance and summarise key points based on what you have seen or heard - Whole-class Feedback.
Focused reflection
How well do you currently use this technique?
Is it a technique you will focus on developing?
If so, what are the key features you will focus on (things to do, and not do)?