Podcast: Move Like You Mean It: How to Circulate Through Your Classroom
Amir Taron Ayres explores how moving through your classroom can uncover misunderstandings, guide instruction, and bring promising student ideas to light.
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You release students to work on an in-class assignment, and then you walk around the room. A pencil hovers. A conversation stalls. An unexpected idea takes shape. But are you noticing these clues—and do you know what to do with them?
In this episode of School of Practice, educator and K-12 district leader Amir Taron Ayres shares his strategies for circulating through the classroom with purpose. We’ll talk through how to spot misconceptions, prepare students to share their thinking, and adjust instruction in real time. Along the way, we’ll explore what your path through the room reveals about who gets your attention—and whose ideas you might be missing.
Related resources:
- What Purposefully Circulating Through the Classroom Looks Like Close observation during tasks helps teachers correct misunderstandings and celebrate when students are getting things right.
- Student Engagement as an Aspect of Classroom Management An educator whose class rules once ‘looked like the Ten Commandments’ has found that fostering intellectual engagement is much more effective for maintaining order.
- Video: A Versatile Seating Arrangement That Really Works Placing students in strategic academic groups at L-shaped tables creates classroom community, improves teacher mobility, and supports struggling students.
- Research: Teachers’ Gaze over Space and Time in a Real-World Classroom A 2020 study out of the Czech Republic used eye-tracking glasses to understand where teachers were directing their attention during lessons.