Language Modeling: Walkthrough Tools

Your walkthroughs are not changing anything. Six weeks of episode first walkthrough tools for Lead Teachers, ten to twelve minutes each, that end in a decision instead of a page of notes.

Every tool carries an episode log: the exchange count, the child's idea, and what changed for the child by the end. There is an episode integrity check that separates a full episode from a near miss that looks like one.

Episode first. ISA trains one unit of practice: the instructional episode. Same child idea, four or more back and forth exchanges, each adult move shaped by what the child just said, and the child's language observably different by the end. The research calls these sustained or extended exchanges. Strategies alone do not move Instructional Support, because a teacher can ask a strong question and stop.

How this lines up with CLASS. ISA names three indicators inside CLASS Language Modeling so a leader can teach and observe one at a time. Foundational Language is parallel talk, self talk, repetition, and recasting. Expanded Language is extensions, back and forth conversation, and contingent follow ups. Conceptual Language is advanced vocabulary, precise language, and explanations in context.

Twelve documents, English and Spanish. Every tool comes twice: a print ready PDF that holds its layout on any printer, and an editable Word version so you can add your logo or line the look-fors up with the framework your program already uses.

This covers one of the three CLASS Instructional Support dimensions. The other two are sold separately. Licensed to one educator in one classroom. School wide or multi observer use requires a site license.

Includes the ISA Episode Detector through June 30, 2027. Your access code is in the download.

Paste a transcript of any adult and child interaction into the tool and it tells you whether the interaction met all four parts of the ISA episode definition, which growth strand it belongs to, and which indicator it demonstrates. It quotes the transcript back to you for every judgment it makes, so you can argue with it.

Three ways it works with these walkthrough tools.

1. Confirm what you saw before you coach it. After a ten minute walkthrough, type the exchange you captured on the episode log into the detector. Find out whether it actually cleared the bar before you name it in a coaching conversation. It keeps "I think that was an episode" from becoming a claim a teacher has to argue with.

2. Settle a disagreement without pulling rank. When two people read the same exchange differently, this is a fast third opinion that quotes the transcript back at you. The times it disagrees with your team are the most useful minutes you will spend.

3. Build your own eye. Run five exchanges a week for a month. Your read gets faster and steadier, and you stop needing the tool for the clear cases. That is the actual payoff.

It is a thought partner, not a scorer. It is almost always right when an interaction is clearly an episode or clearly not one, and the edge cases are exactly where your team's judgment should be doing the work. Never use it for evaluation or accountability purposes.