Gallery Walk is an established classroom activity. So well established that it even has its own Wikipedia article--HERE.
Gallery walk is a classroom-based active learning strategy where students are encouraged to build on their knowledge about a topic or content to promote higher-order thinking, interaction and cooperative learning.[1][2] The students in groups move through different stations where a question is posted for them to answer and interact and share knowledge in the process.
...although it's purpose is slightly different for writing feedback, but the basic idea of walking around the classroom is the same.
Actually let me back up a bit and start from the beginning.
In the Communicative Language Teaching methodology (W), language practice activities should have a communicative purpose.
Therefore, feedback on the language practice activities should have two parts:
1) feedback on the language content (e.g. "you used the past simple here, but actually you need to use the present perfect in this sentence)
2) and feedback on the content (e.g. "I really liked your story about your vacation. It was very exciting.")
During an in-class writing lesson, Gallery Walk is a way of building in feedback on the content of writing, and also ensuring that the writing has a communicative purpose--i.e. students are writing something with a real message that's going to be read by real people in an act of real communication--it's not just simply a language exercise.
This is used for a lesson in which the students are doing some sort of in-class writing practice.
As the students finish writing, the teacher collects the papers, and posts them around the room using blue-tack. (Or the students can post it around the room themselves.)
Then, the students walk around the room and read each other's essays.
Before the students walk around the room, the teacher gives them some sort of communicative question. The exact nature of the question will depend upon the writing task. For an opinion essay, it could be, "Do you agree or disagree with the writer?" For a description of a place, it could be, "Would you like to go to this place?" For a personal narrative, it could be, "What would you have done in this situation?" et cetera.
If you can't think of a good question specific to the task, the usual fallback is, "Which essay did you like the best/most interesting? Why?"
Students then walk around the room and read each other's essays. To make it even more communicative, they can walk around with a partner, and discuss the essays with their partner as they go.
Then, after enough time has gone by, the students return to their seats. If the students have not previously been discussing with a partner, the teacher then gives them a brief time to rehearse their answers with a partner. (e.g. "Talk to the person next to you. Which essay did you think was the most interesting and why?") The teacher then calls on a couple of students to ask them for their answers. (e.g. "John, which essay did you think was the most interesting?")
Then, after this has finished, the teacher moves on next to give feedback on the language from the writing. (e.g. "Here are some of the common mistakes that I noticed today...")
Below is an example of a worksheet that is used for a gallery walk activity. This worksheet I used to supplement Impact 4 Writing: Restaurant Review p.55. The writing task was for the students to write a review of a restaurant, so the Gallery Walk feedback task was for students to read the reviews, and decide if they want to go to the restaurant or not.
Then, based on their classmates reviews, they have to decide which restaurant they would most like to go to.
Students do this gallery walk in pairs, so I hand out one worksheet for two students to share. They discuss together as they read the reviews, and then write down their answers after they've agreed.
Your classmates’ reviews are posted around the room. Read them. Which restaurants do you want to go to? Why?
Which restaurant would you most like to go to? Why?
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