Inquiry into Student Learning: Rationale
Exploring Figurative Language Lesson
Noelle Vaccaro
Adelphi University
Master’s Seminar
0807-788-001
Professor McCarthy
November 16, 2015
Inquiry Question: How do Gallery Walks in ELA engage and immerse students in learning, and
expose them to multiple examples of what they are learning?
For my lesson on exploring figurative language, I decided to choose Gallery Walk as the
main learning strategy. In Gallery Walks, students are given the opportunity to explore various
texts, photographs, or documents around the classroom. Typically, these texts, photographs or
documents are displayed on chart paper at different stations around the classroom. Groups of
students travel from station to station to explore and analyze the texts at each station.
The reason I chose Gallery Walk as my main learning strategy in this lesson is because
this type of activity allows students to explore various texts and examples of figurative language
in these texts. This type of activity will expose students to multiple examples of figurative
language in texts like poems, short stories, and narratives. Gallery Walks are also effective for
other valuable reasons. In this type of activity, students work collaboratively and cooperatively
together and learn how to come to agreements. Specifically, in this lesson, students will assign a
scribe to record their group’s answer on chart paper in the group’s designated area on the chart
paper. Because each group is allowed one answer, the students will have to work out their
disagreements and come to a consensus about which type of figurative language is being used in
the given text and an explanation as to why they believe so. Another reason Gallery Walk is an
effective strategy is because it provides students with the opportunity to move around the
classroom and be actively engaged during learning. Students are not simply sitting at their desks
or on the rug during the entire lesson. They have a chance to get up and get moving which
increases focus and forces students to be involved in the learning process. In this Gallery Walk,
students will know exactly which station they will begin at, how much time they will have at
each station, and which station they will move to next; this will keep the class manageable and
reduce chaos that can often occur when students are moving around the classroom haphazardly
because of lack of planning on the teacher’s behalf. Gallery Walks keep movement around the
classroom organized and structured.