Doug Lemov's field notes

Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.

10.20.17 How Eric Snider Rolls Out His Discussion Procedures

  We’ve been watching a lot of footage of the first weeks of school lately—observing how top teachers set expectations and install systems that they’ll use throughout the year.  We recently watched a clip of Achievement First Bushwick Middle School’s Eric Snider teaching his students to have productive discussions. My colleague Maggie Johnson loved it and…


02.14.17 A Post Card from High-Performing PS 172

Earlier this year Teach Like a Champion team-members Hilary Lewis, Erica Woolway and John Costello visited PS 172 in Brooklyn as part of our efforts to study what high-performing schools and teachers do differently.  John shared these notes: I’m always excited when New York State releases their end-of-year data. The excel spreadsheet is massive. New York’s…


11.24.16 Check for Understanding: Courtney Huber’s ‘Master Clip’ Shows How

This week in our video review meetings we cut a master clip of Courtney Huber, a fourth grade teacher at North Star Academy’s Vailsburg Elementary School in Newark.  We call it a master clip because it is a case study in the use of all the parts of Checking for Understanding woven together.  It starts as…


09.02.16 How to Batch Process–Starring Jason Brewer & his Prepsters

Batch Process is technique #44 in TLaC 2.0.  The idea is that rather than responding to or mediating every student comment during discussion, it can be beneficial to let students talk several times in a row, directly to one another, before you step in to guide or shape. This idea is sometimes referred to as playing…