Doug Lemov's field notes

Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.

05.02.14 Fear is the Enemy of Success—An Elite Coach on Embracing Error

About a year ago the US Soccer Federation helped me identify four top performing youth soccer coaches around the country.  The idea was to study them in much the same way I’d studied elite teachers for Teach like a Champion and then to write profiles of them to make their ideas visible to other coaches. The…


04.15.14 Clip of the Day: Katie Bellucci Checks for Understanding (Video)

As soon as we cut this clip of math teacher Katie Bellucci this week, I knew readers would want to see it.  It’s a pretty amazing demonstration of several of the techniques in the (NEW!) Check for Understanding chapters in TLAC 2.0… it’s also a clip I’m likely to add to the 2.0 version of the book……


01.27.14 Ok, So What’s Your ‘Tell’??

I’m writing about a new topic for TLAC 2.0: The Tell (defined below). It’d be helpful to hear some examples of ‘tells’ people are aware of in their own teaching.  I hope to include a few in the book so please chime in with examples in the comments section. And please enjoy this short excerpt from…


06.10.13 Learning and Struggle–A Postcard from Nashville

Spent the day in Nashville, observing training (and new teachers) at TNTP’s Nashville Teaching Fellows program. Pretty outstanding program.  Gonna post more later about the great things they do to prepare new teachers for the classroom.  In the meantime I thought I’d share this tiny little—but really powerful—artifact from my visit.  This was on the wall…