The post Teaching Advice From Taylor (Swift) appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
]]>
A colleague who attended our recent workshop for medical educators, Josie Amory of Seattle, WA, passed along this Instagram post from Taylor Swift about her concert preparation routine:
“This insta post reminded me of the discussion we had about working memory and habits good teachers use to reduce their dependence on working memory, which in turn allows for more present moment situational awareness,” Josie wrote.
Can I just say that I could not agree more with Josie’s take on the “Wisdom of Taylor.”
One of the most important things teachers can do to be more responsive to and connected with students during a lesson is to prepare extensively so their own lesson is clear in their own mind and they can teach with a lessened load on WM.
Working memory is limited for teachers too and if you’re trying to think about your next question or the answer you hope you’ll get, you have less of that working memory left over to observe and react to your students.
“How will I manage my own Working Memory as I teach?” is one of the most important questions teachers can ask themselves.
And ironically, sometimes people think careful preparation makes you less flexible, but it does the opposite. It lets you be fully present during the lesson.
So to be like Taylor we suggest that teachers consider some or all of the following steps (sorry, no treadmill and dance moves):
Lesson preparation in other words is different from lesson planning. Preparation is what you do to manage your Working Memory as you teach. With better preparation you can, in Taylor’s words, “be silly [or smart or thoughtful or responsive] with the fans without losing your train of thought.”
Good luck on stage!
The post Teaching Advice From Taylor (Swift) appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
]]>The post New Team Members and New Roles on the TLAC Team appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
]]>We often introduce ourselves in our workshops by sharing that Teach Like a Champion is more than just a book, but that we are actually a team of people who have come together to study teaching with the belief that any contemplation of a more just, equitable and inclusive society requires that schools are not just better, but radically better for children, especially those in our most underserved communities.
And we are excited to share here (albeit belatedly), that that our team is continuing to grow and expand. We’re excited to share that six veteran team members have taken on larger leadership roles in our organization and that we have added two additional team members who we already can’t imagine living without. Please join us in celebrating the changes on the #BTE (internal nomenclature for “Best Team Ever”).
Tracey Koren: For you long time TLACers, the name “Tracey Koren” is probably synonymous with TLAC. She has been your consistent go-to for all things TLAC. Her email response time heroically averages 6.5 minutes, and she keeps all the trains moving at TLAC Towers. Hardly a day goes by without us saying that we truly don’t know how we would do the work without Tracey. We are so proud to now call her our Associate Director of Operations.
Hilary Lewis: We are thrilled to announce that Hilary is now Managing Director of Consulting and Partnerships. With over 16 years of experience in the education sector, Hilary’s knowledge, passion, and expertise has helped our organization grow since 2015. A thought leader for our classroom and school culture work, Hilary has developed and facilitated countless workshops for educators across the world. Most recently, Hilary has worked alongside our CEO Darryl Williams to build our consulting and partnership work from the ground up. In her new role, Hilary will manage our Consulting and Partnership team portfolio of 25 schools and organizations impacting over 500,000 students.
Colleen Driggs: In keeping with the marathon runners theme, many of you know Colleen from some of our earliest TLAC Clips and we’ve had the honor of continuing to learn from her since she joined the team in 2007. Colleen now leads our Reading Reconsidered Curriculum and Training work as our Managing Director of Curriculum and Professional Development. In this capacity, alongside Doug and Erica, Colleen has built a team that has brought a knowledge rich, book-based curriculum to market – most recently gaining the approval of the Knowledge Matters Campaign. Our team is so lucky to get to learn from Colleen’s expertise and insight each and every day.
Dan Cotton: We are thrilled to announce that Dan is now Senior Director of Strategy and Partnerships. For years, Dan has helped shape the Teach Like a Champion team’s core products and services—from developing and managing our Plug and Play portfolio to the design and launch of TLAC Online. Under his leadership, our team has established deep partnerships both stateside and abroad with organizations such as TNTP, Aptus, QELI Australia, Harmony Public Schools, and the Bluum Foundation. In his new role, Dan will manage our partnership strategic planning and development, seeking opportunities to work with organizations in service of students, teachers, and their communities.
Jen Rugani: Joining our team after her years as a principal in 2018, Jen Rugani has been pivotal in shaping the development and implementation of the Reading Reconsidered Curriculum. We are thrilled to announce that she is now a Director of Curriculum and School Support. In her new role, Jen will continue her incredible curriculum development work while sharpening her focus on the support of curriculum pilot partner schools through PD and extended coaching partnerships. In addition to her work on the curriculum team, Jen leads our TLAC Fellows work alongside Sadie McCleary and our DEI work alongside Brittany Hargrove.
Emily Badillo: Our Reading Curriculum is currently comprised of 37 novel based units serving grades 5th-8th. This wouldn’t be possible without Emily’s vision for high quality ELA curriculum and her perseverance in creating it. We are pleased to announce that Emily will now be serving alongside Jen as our Director of Curriculum and School Support. In her new role, Emily will continue to support pilot schools through PD and coaching while leading the team in content development. Given Emily’s brilliant work as a curriculum writer and meticulousness as a project planner, we’re excited that she will be focused on leading the team in our important work of revising existing units based on the rich feedback we’ve gotten from schools using our curriculum.
Christian Sparling: Christian is joining our team as our Senior Director of Operations after working for the past 15 years in schools and organizations where his focus on operational excellence built a lasting legacy for schools in NJ. His work at Relay Graduate School of Education and Leverage Leadership Institute created pathways for countless teachers and leaders to gain invaluable experiences. On Team TLAC, he is working with Array and our Operations Team to more strategically budget, plan, and operate, so that we can continue to impact as many schools and classrooms as possible.
Alonte Johnson: And our most recent addition to the TLAC Team is none other than former principal Alonte Johnson who joins our team as Associate Director of Curriculum and School Support. Having been on the team now for just a few months, Alonte has already made an incredible impact. Internally, we’ve learned much through his insights and thoughtful perspectives as a former teacher and school leader. Externally, he’s led several remote and in-person PDs and is focusing on deep support of curriculum implementation in a pilot program with NYC DOE schools, and also supporting Brittany Hargrove in our Advocacy work.
It’s truly pinch-worthy that we get to work alongside so many incredible people. To meet the rest of the #BTE, please check out our team here.
The post New Team Members and New Roles on the TLAC Team appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
]]>The post Foundational Literacy Isn’t Easy But Dayla Bedford Shows the Way appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
]]>
This week Jen Rugani and I have been presenting our first iteration of a new workshop, Foundational Literacy.
Why a Foundational Literacy workshop?
There’s been a massive and important migration towards structured literacy programs with systematic and synthetic phonics in the primary grades. That’s a good thing. (Heavy debt of gratitude here to Emily Hanford and her Sold a Story podcast).
But a better reading program is not enough. The program has to be taught well, too, with precision and energy and pace, if we want to see transformational reading outcomes. And that is surprisingly hard.
Surprising, we say, because, foundational reading, which is heavy on repetition and direct instruction, seems so easy.
It is anything but. The body of knowledge students have to master on the way to fluent expressive reading–44 letter sounds, 74 consonant blends and more than 125 digraphs, for starters—is an order of magnitude larger than any other body of information our youngest students have to master. And they have to know it all. And know it cold. So the details–how we cause high quality practice where we assess student progress effectively and keep the energy level high—matter and are not easy to master.
In light of that, consider the this short clip of Dayla Bedford, a first grade teacher at Emma Donnan Elementary School in Indianapolis, IN.
To us, Dayla is crushes the details. The practice is efficient and productive; joyful and lively. And Dayla’s ability to make it look easy is absolutely deceptive.
Some Key Points:
Go, Dayla and thanks for sharing your teaching with us!
The post Foundational Literacy Isn’t Easy But Dayla Bedford Shows the Way appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
]]>The post The Bug That Didn’t (Disprupt Dayla Bedford’s Lesson): A Mini Case Study appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
]]>
Our weekly team meeting gives us the chance to do what we love most: study great teaching. This week, we had the privilege to study Dayla Bedford of Emma Donnan Elementary School in Indianapolis, IN. Dayla joyfully and skillfully executing a phonics lesson with her first-graders. [We’ll share a longer video of Dayla’s impressive phonics instruction soon (and we are excited to share more on that in our upcoming remote Foundational Literacy Workshop)] But we couldn’t pass up the chance in the meantime to share how Dayla handled a special visitor to her classroom: a bug! TLAC team-member Dillon Fisher shared her notes:
You may be thinking: What can a bug show me about great teaching?! But with Ms. Bedford at the helm, the answer is: a lot! Check out the moment below:
Here are a few lessons we can take from Dayla’s savvy response:
We never imagined that a bug would lead to such team critter-chatter (couldn’t help myself), but, thanks to Dayla, we are grateful that it did. This clip reminds us the value in staying ‘steady at the helm’ in all circumstances and in leaning on clear What To Do Directions to help students navigate the unexpected with as much confidence and joy as her first-graders did.
The post The Bug That Didn’t (Disprupt Dayla Bedford’s Lesson): A Mini Case Study appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
]]>The post Reading Comprehension Breakdowns are Often Knowledge-Problems Disguised As Skill Problems. An example. appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
]]>
I watched a fascinating moment in a reading classroom last week.
The class (third grade) was reading Charlotte’s Web when they came across this scene:
“But Charlotte,” said Wilbur, “I’m not terrific.”
“That doesn’t make a particle of difference,” replied Charlotte. “Not a particle. People believe almost anything they see in print. Does anybody know how to spell terrific?”
“I think,” said the gander, “It’s tee double ee double rr double rr double eye double see see see see see.”
“What kind of acrobat do you think I am?” said Charlotte in disgust.
The teacher paused here and asked why Charlotte was disgusted with the gander.
Two students responded. The first said because the gander always talked to much. The second because the gander always said everything three times.
Both of which are true and both of which are wrong.
It would have been easy to assume that the problem was skill-based: that the students didn’t understand something about Charlotte’s perspective, that they didn’t understand something about how to infer a character’s point of view.
But the teacher asked a simple question: Who knows what an acrobat is?
There were a smattering of hands but not many. A boy responded: “It’s a little bit like a magician.”
Revelation: The problem was not a skill problem. It was a knowledge problem. The class did not know what an acrobat was. If you don’t know what an acrobat is you don’t know that Charlotte is disgusted because the gander’s very long spelling of the word implies lots of work hanging precariously from a web. And asking a bunch of “what might Charlotte be feeling?” questions or discussing how to make an inference about character won’t help.
I suspect this is a chronic problem in the teaching of reading. We see reading comprehension issues as skill-based problems when in fact they are knowledge-based, but because we, as teachers, have more knowledge than our students, we can be blind to the gaps. This is sometimes called the curse of expertise or the curse of knowledge. It’s actually quite difficult in the moment to ask about the knowledge gaps because it’s hard to see them. It might never cross a teacher’s mind —that kids wouldn’t know what an acrobat is.
So A+ to the teacher I observed for her question.
But what to do next?
The teacher in this case asked students to discuss with their partner what an acrobat might be and here I thought: good but not great. They were mostly guessing. Best, I think would be to provide a definition of acrobat: “a person who performs skillful moves in the air, like in a circus,” perhaps. Maybe even with a picture like the one above. Then: “Write that in the margin. Great. Why might writing the word the gander has proposed require Charlotte to be an acrobat? Why might it disgust her?”
This, I would argue, is a knowledge-based solution. Give students the knowledge they lack. Ask them to apply it to the problem.
The post Reading Comprehension Breakdowns are Often Knowledge-Problems Disguised As Skill Problems. An example. appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
]]>The post We Loved These Examples of Lesson Preparation from Our Recent Workshop appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
]]>TLAC team members Teneicesia White and Sadie McCleary recently returned from leading a workshop in Raleigh, NC, where the focus was on Checking for Understanding. While there they gathered some fantastic examples of Lesson Preparation from teachers who joined them! Sadie was so inspired she shared this analysis:
This example of Lesson Preparation from Paige, a 6th/7th grade math teacher is a great example of the kind of Lesson Preparation work teachers were sharing.
The lesson plan is reflected on the printed page. It involves a sequence of problems and questions. But the lesson preparation consists of the things Paige has hand-written on her plan. It shows what she’s thinking about as she gets ready to teach. Fortunately, she’s used two colors so we can see some of the steps she takes more clearly.
She’s written out her Exemplar in blue pen and pencil. She has Planned for Error with her back pocket questions in green. When Paige implements this lesson, she’ll be able to circulate thoughtfully, checking student responses against her exemplars and quickly recognize where to give them feedback. But she’s likely to do a very good job of this because she’s thought through the mistakes she’s likely to see and the questions she might ask in response: “Does 119 1/7 make sense? Why or why not?” and “What is total? Is [the] answer [going to be] greater than what we are starting with?”
In the upper left-hand corner she’s written: “EW 3 mins → CC”. It means she’ll use “Everybody Writes for 3 minutes and then Cold Call… she’s thought through not only what questions to ask but how students will answer—her Means of Participation.
And then there’s Post-It. She said she was planning to create a different Post-It for each class period, which would allow her to track data efficiently but without cluttering up her Lesson Prep document.
With thoughtful and practical preparation like that, Paige is likely to crush it.
Here’s another example! This teacher, MJ, a 9th grade Biology teacher, decided to create a data tracker that will allow her to quickly and efficiently use tallies as she circulates to identify ideas she needs to review with students.
Note her ‘laps’ – these indicate when she will ‘lap’ around the room and what she will be looking for. In lap 1, she’s going to remain laser-focused on looking for the 3 components of cell theory, even if a student has moved onto the next part of the task. We think this is supportive in a few ways:
We think laps are helpful because you can also use them to announce to students what you’ll be looking for as you circulate. “In my first lap around the room, I’m looking that you have the 3 components of cell theory. If I put a check, you’re correct, and if I circle one of them, I want you to check it against your notes.”
Importantly, both Paige’s and MJ’s Lesson Preparation documents were created over the course of a combined 25 minutes of practice time during our workshop.
More on the Distinction between Lesson Planning and Lesson Preparation.
Want to learn more?
Blog Post: Examples of Lesson Preparation and Adaptation from Teachers at Believe Memphis Academy
Blog Post: Lesson Preparation: How Christine Torres Prepares to Teach
The post We Loved These Examples of Lesson Preparation from Our Recent Workshop appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
]]>The post Rebecca Sloots: Building Ratio…and Great Writers in Queensland appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
]]>
The newest clip in the TLAC library is one that’s really worth watching.
It’s of Rebecca Sloots’ grade 4 class at Fernbrooke State School in Redbank Plains, Queensland, Australia.
That makes it some of our very first classroom video from Australia. But more importantly it’s an outstanding example of how to build a high ratio classroom via strong academic routines and especially intentional and deliberate writing.
Here’s the clip.
At the outset Rebecca cues her students to answer the question—”How do we know this is a poem?”—in writing. This causes every student to answer the question and to answer it well- writing being more challenging and precise than mere speaking.
She cues the writing with the phrase “silent solo” and as you can see the room bursts to life. With a strong routine like this there’s no lost time and no hesitation and students are happily and busily at work straight away. This has the added benefit of reinforcing the perception among students that Rebecca’s classroom is an orderly, productive, positive place.
Even though her routines are crisp, Rebecca circulates to reinforce the silent solo expectations, interacting briefly with students to let them know what they write and that they do their best writing is important to her.
Next she cues another routine: Turn and Talk. Again students are familiar. We know this because a mere phrase and a non verbal gesture is enough to cause the room to crackle into conversation.
After the Turn and Talk Rebecca asks for volunteers and practically every hand in the class goes up. Of course it does. Everyone has thought deeply about the answer. Everyone has rehearsed their thoughts with a peer. They’re prepared and confident.
Rebecca then sources four or five answers from students and makes perhaps my favorite move: she goes back and asks them to write their answers again, improving them. “We’re not going to write more,” she tells students. “We’re going to write it better.”
I love this because it shows how powerful writing in short deliberate bursts and then revising to improve can be. As Judith Hochman observes, teachers assign a lot of writing but they don’t always teach it that well. Here, by having students write in small amounts she instantly allows students to revise and improve.
She’s also adapts one of my favorite tools for classrooms the front the writing template. The idea is to have students write before they discuss and then revise after so that they are caused to listen carefully and harvest ideas from their peers.
And you can see what a great job Rebecca’s students do of that. They write much-improved sentences and do a great job of using each others’ ideas (and identifying what makes their sentences better).
We love what Rebecca and her students have done here and note that she’s set the bar high for further video from Oz. Australian teachers, we can’t wait to see more!!!
The post Rebecca Sloots: Building Ratio…and Great Writers in Queensland appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
]]>The post The Power of the ‘Roll Out Speech,’ Featuring Associate Professor of Medicine Rene Claxton appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
]]>
Next week Erica Woolway, Sadie McCleary and I will be leading the first session in a remote workshop on teaching for medical educators. It’s our second time offering the workshop and we’ve found it really fun and fascinating to talk about how Wait Time and Everybody Writes and Cold Call can apply to–and accelerate learning during–the education doctors receive.
One of the best parts of the workshop is that we get to show video of both K-12 teachers and medical educators. And our newest clip–we just added it to the workshop this morning–is this one of Rene Claxton and her colleague Maria Lowry. It’s the first day of a course for Palliative and Supportive Institute clinicians at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Rene is giving what we call a “Roll Out Speech”… it’s a very brief explanation for students of the how and why of a specific teaching technique the teacher will be using.
In this case, Rene is explaining and making explicit her use of Cold Call and Habits of Discussion. She uses these techniques because…. well, I’ll let her explain them herself:
It’s such a service to students to know what to expect from the teacher and why. And it’s such an exemplar of team teaching that Rene explains the what and why and Maria then uses those techniques right away! Great teamwork!
Some things we loved:
There are lots more great details here but I’ll just close by pointing out how fast it is. Less than two minutes and everyone understands what to expect and why it will make them successful. And before they know it they’ve tried it out.
FYI if you’re a medical educator and find this interesting, we still have a few spaces left in our upcoming workshop. It’s running Tuesday and Thursday afternoons throughout September. Details and registration here:
And thanks to Rene and Maria for sharing their amazing work!
The post The Power of the ‘Roll Out Speech,’ Featuring Associate Professor of Medicine Rene Claxton appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
]]>The post How Millfield School Socializes Positive Listening and Discussion Behaviors, School-Wide appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
]]>
I recently had the pleasure of working with teachers at Millfield School in Somerset (England). The topic was classroom discussions and how to make them more effective by 1) socializing students to listen better and 2) socializing them to talk to rather than past each other… to build off of and develop one another’s ideas and to signal appreciation for what classmates said.
We discussed this outstanding video of Ben Hall rolling out Habits of Discussion with his students at Ipswich Academy, for example, and they like so many schools loved the explanatory slide Ben and his colleagues developed to help build those behaviors into the fabric of classrooms.
As part of the preparation for my session at Millfield Deputy Head Alex Haydon shared a booklet the school had developed to guide their work on the Oracy Project they’d developed. The booklet developed some of these in really useful ways that, aith Alex’s approval, I thought I’d share a few things I loved.
First the booklet is explicit about the central role of listening in any discussion. It’s something we can and must teach when students talk and these two pages from the booklet do a great job IMO of naming clear and important foundational behaviors so teachers can reinforce them with students.
I also loved this framing of “discussion roles.” It’s similar to what Ben and company put together at Ipswich Academy but it adds additional roles for students to take on. Naming that they can seek probe and clarify adds real value, I think. But I also love the guidance at the bottom: don’t try to teach (or ask students to use) all six roles at once. Let them learn them a few at a time. It’s great practical advice.
Lastly I love the idea of all of this being in a booklet for staff so everyone is on the same page, has common vocabulary, and has a shared vision of what they model they aspire to in classroom discussion. Obviously these sorts of norms work best when everyone in the school is working on them at the same time.
It’s great stuff… and not to late to borrow or adapt for this year!
The post How Millfield School Socializes Positive Listening and Discussion Behaviors, School-Wide appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
]]>The post Advocacy Partnerships: Studying the Craft of Teaching with Man Up, Memphis appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
]]>
As an organization, Teach Like a Champion has grown quite a bit over recent years and there are quite e few projects we’re involved in that even our faithful readers may not be aware of. In this blog post, Director of Advocacy and Partnerships, Brittany Hargrove describes our work with Man Up Memphis to help bring more men of color into the teaching profession and ensure their support and success.
Over the past few years, our team has been working alongside (and learning from) organizations that, like us, are fighting for a more just and equitable society by inspiring more effective teaching. These partnerships have been part of our team’s commitment to supporting organizations that ensure educators of color are positioned to impact and thrive in the school communities they serve. This blog series, which we’re calling “Advocacy Partnerships: Stories of Growth and Impact”, will chronicle what we’re learning from these amazing organizations and hopefully inform schools’ efforts to attract, nurture, retain, and advance the careers of educators of color.
First up in our blog series is an introduction to Man Up Memphis. Led by Dr. Patrick Washington along with Nicole Lytle and Sarah Isenhart, Man Up Memphis is a non-profit organization helping students succeed by providing an educator talent pipeline of men of color. Through our partnership with Man Up, we support the Fellows with development that will advance their expertise as classroom teachers. It’s critically important to get more men of color into the teaching profession; but it’s equally important to ensure their success once they get there, so that they rise in the field and so that they are master teachers and their students thrive. We have had the privilege of working alongside Man Up coaches, Dr. Mike Brown, Camile Melton Brown, Vaughn Thompson, and Jonathan Humphrey, who created Practice Lab opportunities for Fellows to continue to practice techniques and get real time feedback.
This past year we spent time studying the technique of Active Observation with Fellows. The technique involves making intentional decisions about what to look for when observing student’s work in the classroom and maintaining discipline in looking for what you’ve prioritized. The goal of our Active Observation session was to help Fellows become more flexible and responsive to student work, so that their feedback was more specific and could ultimately lead to improved work quality. Man Up Fellow, Derrick Squaire, who is a dedicated mathematics teacher in his fifth year of teaching, graciously allowed us to learn from his expertise this past year.
The video below showcases Derrick’s journey implementing his learning and how Man Up’s investment in developing their fellows is paying off for students.
We believe Derrick’s progress and growth can help answer a question that is critical to our organization: How do schools and organizations successfully attract, nurture, retain, and advance the careers of their educators of color? Research suggests that all students benefit from having diverse teachers, and for students of color, learning from teachers of color leads to better academic performance, improved graduation rates, and increases the prospect of college attendance[1]. It is critical for us to uplift and learn from the efforts of organizations like Man Up, who through their programming are providing not just a pipeline for educators of color to enter the field, but a real chance for Fellows to sustain their impact and outcomes for the communities they serve.
Man Up, Memphis isn’t alone in their charge. In fact, we’ve spent the better part of four years trying to learn as much as we can from other amazing organizations helping schools attract, nurture, retain, and advance the careers of educators of color. In addition to our partnership with Man Up, we’ve had the honor of learning with and from two additional organizations, Teachers Like Me and National Fellowship for Black and Latino Male Educators, who’ve also committed to ensuring exceptional educators of color can lend their talent, expertise, and wisdom to school communities that need them most.
In addition to providing the sustained training and coaching opportunities that we know lead to success for all educators, our Advocacy partners also give educators of color safe spaces to process and reflect on their experiences, access to an advocate within their school communities, and connection to an organizational culture where they feel belonging with their colleagues. These resources ultimately help determine whether educators of color remain and thrive in their school communities.
Over the next few months, we’ll continue our blog series, exploring the ideas and insights previewed above, with the hope that schools might adopt and adapt practices that better position them to attract, nurture, retain, and advance the careers of exceptional educators of color.
At TLAC, we believe teaching is the most important work in the world and that any contemplation of a more just and equitable society requires that classrooms and schools are radically better for children. We thank Man Up, Memphis and all our Advocacy partners for the incredible work they do on behalf of kids and families, and for helping us get smarter about teaching and learning.
For more information on our Advocacy partners and how you might support their efforts, please see below:
[1] David Blazar, Teachers of Color, Culturally Responsive Teaching, and Student Outcomes: Experimental Evidence from the Random Assignment of Teachers to Classes, 1-58.
The post Advocacy Partnerships: Studying the Craft of Teaching with Man Up, Memphis appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
]]>