Doug Lemov's field notes

Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.

05.21.25 Ben Katcher: Exam Review & Partner Retrieval Practice

  Ben Katcher was a Teach Like A Champion Fellow from 2023-24. For his final project, he focused on developing a knowledge-rich AP US History curriculum. Ben discussed knowledge organizers with Doug on the Sweat the Technique podcast (here). Sign up for his free newsletter about how to apply the science of learning in the classroom…


05.19.25 A Beautiful Example of FASE Reading from Jessica Sliman’s Classroom

I’m really excited to share our newest video clip–a great example of of one of the most important techniques in the TLAC library, FASE Reading. FASE Reading is a technique that supports student fluency and engagement in reading, topics we discuss extensively in the forthcoming TLAC Guide to the Science of Reading. The clip comes to…


05.13.25 Coming Soon: Knowledge-Rich, Book-Centered High School Reading Curriculum

  As many readers probably know, we have written and published a middle school reading curriculum built around the science of reading. And now we’re writing a high school curriculum as well! We think this is a hugely important project.  There’s very little high-quality curriculum out there for high school English teachers that supports them with…


05.09.25 Teacher Appreciation Week

The Teach Like a Champion team had a dilemma. Too many team members wanted to write our blog post in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week! So we decided to share the mic and asked the whole team to contribute. It’s resulted in one of the longest and most enthusiastic posts of all time and still doesn’t…


05.06.25 Reading Aloud for Fluency: Celebration is as Important as Correction

  Reading aloud both to and WITH students is one of the most important things teachers can do in reading class. Doing so helps build accuracy and automaticity in a way that silent reading can’t. And when students are socialized to read with a bit of prosody, to capture the intended meaning in their expression–we get…