Doug Lemov's field notes

Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.

06.01.17 Imagining a New Bloom’s

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about the uses and mis-uses of Bloom’s Taxonomy, that trusted framework of teaching referenced by just about every teacher on god’s green earth.  Briefly, people see the pyramid and they think- “Oh, more rigorous is higher up… I should ask all “higher order questions.” I should avoid being…


12.20.16 My Favorite Mistake: Knowledge Problems and Skill Problems

  I’m lucky enough to get to learn constantly in my work and that inevitably involves recognizing my own mistaken thinking—things I believed but that I think time and evidence have proven were wrong. Here’s an example: A few nights ago as I was tucked in, reading aloud from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s On the Banks of…


05.26.15 Knowledge is a Commodity! (Or is it?)

I read the following quotation this morning in an article in Fast Company on the future of college (italics mine): “Charging people lots of money to provide them with skills they could learn from an Internet video is probably not gonna be a viable long-term financial model,” says Richard Miller, president of Olin College of Engineering….