Doug Lemov's field notes

Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.

09.13.16 Helen Howell Shares Embedded Nonfiction Ideas for Macbeth

Helen Howell is English AST and Lead Teacher for Literacy at The Radclyffe School in Oldham, Manchester, UK, where the school has recently moved from Ofsted’s ‘requires improvement’ rating to ‘outstanding’ and enjoyed their best ever English results in 2016.  As a result of their recent focus on using academic language, building oracy and grammar skills…


03.16.16 A Second Excerpt on Building Background Knowledge from Reading Reconsidered

Colleen, Erica and I were so excited to find ourselves in the pages of the thought-provoking journal EducationNext this morning.  We chatted about Reading Reconsidered with Marty West for 15 minutes or so on his podcast and the magazine ran a short excerpt from chapter three of the book where we discuss the connection between background…