Gallery walks transform classrooms by using movement, collaboration, and thoughtful discussions to turn students into active learners and help them develop critical thinking and social skills.
If you aren’t familiar with gallery walks, they’re an instructional strategy in which students move in small groups around the room to actively engage with information at different stations. Typically, each station includes an image or document and a prompt asking students to analyze, reflect on, or discuss the shared content so they can share ideas and learn from their peers. Including gallery walks in your lesson plans gives you the ability to offer multiple perspectives on a subject using historical documents, maps, and images.
Planning and completing a gallery walk takes time and typically involves several steps that include planning and setup. Let’s examine some ways to use AI to help you plan your gallery walk, increase productivity, and save time!
We’re using the AI tool ChatGPT (reviewed here) at an example, but there are many other AI tools you can use for the same purpose. Explore our curated special topics collection about using artificial intelligence for productivity to find additional free AI tools.
How to Use AI to Plan a Gallery Walk:
- Begin by defining your teaching objective or standard, then ask ChatGPT to help you plan your gallery walk using specific language and information about your subject. Be sure to include your grade level and your objective.
- Try it: Create a gallery walk for my _____th grade class to learn about _____.
- In the same conversation you just opened, clarify the content ChatGPT needs to include to meet your needs. Clarification might include defining the number of stations, editing or describing the type of content or a specific page of content for each station, or asking it to include certain technology tools. Continue adding clarifications until you are satisfied with the content included in each station.
- Try it: Change Station 1 to _____ and change the time allowed at each station to _____ minutes.
- After clarifying the content, continue to interact with the chatbot to define essential questions for each station.
- Try it: Create an essential question for students to answer at each station.
- Ask ChatGPT to create a learning journal for students to complete. Detail specific prompts or areas you want included. When finished, ChatGPT will usually ask if you want the journal in a ready-to-use printable PDF form. If it doesn’t ask on its own, you can ask it to create one as you continue to refine your gallery walk activities.
- Try it: Create a learning journal for students to fill out during the gallery walk. Include an area for responding to each essential question, a place for questions they have, and an area for drawing.
- ChatGPT can also create images for your gallery walk, depending on your subject. There is a daily limit on the number of images you can create with a free account, but you can circumvent that issue by using Microsoft Designer (reviewed here), Adobe Firefly (reviewed here), or Canva’s Image Generator (reviewed here) instead.
- Try it: Create an image depicting _____ to use at station _____.
Ready to try it out? This example uses the prompt suggestions above to create a gallery walk and a student learning log for a 5th grade class learning about North American geography.
Additional Planning Prompt Ideas:
- Ask ChatGPT for additional questions for each station. Questions for students to complete after studying and analyzing the image or document can be displayed next to or under the item. Include the placement of the question to receive the most helpful suggestions.
- Use AI to create your student groups by entering student ID numbers or first names. Include specific instructions, such as “John should always be with Mary” or “Peter should never be with George.”
- If using the gallery walk as an introduction to a new unit, ask for additional extension or project-based learning activities, or create a choice board based on your objectives.
- If you already use gallery walks, upload your current lesson and ask chat to make suggestions for new media to include, generate ideas for stations, or create a learning log based on the contents.
- Ask your AI to identify common misconceptions students have about your topic, then ask it to include information to address the misconceptions as part of the gallery walk.
If you’re still learning to use AI tools and these conversations seem a little complicated, check out the ChatGPT Gallery Walk Creator, a pre-made tool for creating gallery walks that takes users through the process using an upgraded version of ChatGPT called GPT-4. This version is free, but there are limits on daily use. If you reach the daily or hourly limit, GPT-4 saves your work, and you can return later to complete your planning.
If you’ve hesitated to use gallery walks due to time or creative restrictions, or if your current lessons need some tweaking, now is the time to give it another try using the support of AI tools such as ChatGPT.
Do you have suggestions on using AI and gallery walks to save time or add creativity to your classroom? Add your ideas to the comments below as we all learn together!