Doug Lemov's field notes

Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.

09.10.21 The First Days (of Cold Call) with Bradi Bair

About a week ago I posted a clip of Bradi Bair Cold Calling with her math students at Memphis Rise Academy in Memphis, TN.  I wrote about how she observed which students had the best answers and used that to make her Cold Call an honor. This was a great way to build a positive culture…


08.31.21 Bradi Bair’s Cold Calling Models Positivity and Rigor

I’ve spent much of this week watching the first batch of video from school year 2021-22 classrooms. Watching classrooms with everyone masked is a bit disconcerting at first but it’s remarkable how quickly things feel closer to normal. Familiar interactions and relationships don’t take long to seem… well… familiar. And already there’s so much to learn….


08.24.21 A Graphic Representation of Timing the Name in Cold Call

A few days ago I came across the above outstanding illustration created by Luke Tayler, a geography teacher in Bahrain.  It captures in graphic form the power of timing the name during Cold Call. The basic idea is that when students know you might Cold Call and you use a structure of question-pause-name for your question,…


07.18.21 On Cold Call and ‘Voice Equity,’ a TLAC 3.0 Excerpt

As many readers know, the release of TLAC 3.0 has been delayed by a few weeks. As a result I’m going to spend much of August sharing useful pieces of the manuscript on line. This section is from the discussion of the purposes of Cold Calling, the first of which may surprise you. In the previous…