Our weekly team meeting gives us the chance to do what we love most: study great teaching. This week, we had the privilege to study Dayla Bedford of Emma Donnan Elementary School in Indianapolis, IN. Dayla joyfully and skillfully executing a phonics lesson with her first-graders. [We’ll share a longer video of Dayla’s impressive phonics…
Teachers deserve to love studying their work and improving their craft. They deserve great professional development characterized by smart, practical content and by facilitation that models what great teaching looks like. One of the shocking things about our field is how rarely that happens. On Team TLAC, we take delivering PD seriously. We think teachers should…
We’ve recently had the pleasure of watching a few great videos shared with us by the team at Rivers Primary Academy in Walsall, England. The clips exemplify not just impressive implementation and adaptation of TLAC techniques but–pretty clearly, we think a culture that takes the support and development of teachers seriously. I’m going to share…
How you ask students to answer a question is often as important as the question you ask. If you don’t get everyone to answer, if you don’t cause everyone to think deeply about the answer, even the best question will only be so useful. So great teaching relies on clarity about Means of Participation–that’s what…
Any great reading curriculum should be built around books, we think. Reading whole books, cover to cover, helps students develop a deep understanding of an authorial voice. It helps them build deep understanding of ideas and empathy for characters. It helps them sustain interest in a story for an extended period of time. It teaches…