Here’s a slide I showed recently to coaches at a workshop: The slide is an attempt to describe a common challenge I see in the teaching/coaching of athletes. Here’s the scene. Athletes are playing. We are observing them as coaches. We notice something that needs to be improved. So we stop and make a teaching point. …
Wanted to take a moment to share a really lovely and elegant video from Narlene Pacheco’s kindergarten classroom at Partnership NYC’s Immaculate Conception School in the Bronx. Narlene’s teaching demonstrates a lot of elements of the Check for Understanding (CFU) technique, most of all Tracking Not Watching– the idea that careful observation for…
I’ve been blogging quite a bit this year about the English Curriculum my team is writing. I shared an overview of our goals and methods here. I shared some examples of how we’re approaching vocabulary here. I shared some examples of the ‘sensitivity analysis’ questions we use for Close Reading here. I reflected on…
Over winter break I spent five days in Orlando. My son was playing in the Disney Soccer Showcase. I have some thoughts. This was the first time I’ve ever been to the DSS. Generally my wife–rightly–forbids soccer tournaments during major holidays because family time is more important and sports already take up too much of…
In the annals of being a teacher, hoping to see 20 eager hands raised when you’ve asked a question but seeing only two or three instead is among the most common challenges. Since this blog is a judgment free zone I just want to say it’s ok. We have all, every single one of us, been…