A topic I’ve been thinking about as I’ve watched coaches over the past couple of months is something I call ‘means of participation.’ It’s relevant during questioning. I’ve written about if for classroom teachers here. But it’s relevant for coaches too- questioning is important in building decision-making and reinforcing knowledge through recall practice…
I’ve spent a lot of time watching coaches this year. One of the common ideas I find myself noticing is the difference between critique and correction. I took the section on this idea from Practice Perfect and adapted and simplified it slightly. Here it is. Critique involves telling a participant how to do it better. Correction…
Just two weeks to go until our annual Practice Perfect workshop when we spend two days studying what is probably the secret to more effective teacher training- deliberate practice. Teaching is a performance profession–though few people think of it that way. This means that we perform live. We go on stage five times a day. And…
A few weeks ago I wrote a post about the uses and mis-uses of Bloom’s Taxonomy, that trusted framework of teaching referenced by just about every teacher on god’s green earth. Briefly, people see the pyramid and they think- “Oh, more rigorous is higher up… I should ask all “higher order questions.” I should avoid being…
Every week at TLAC Towers we watch and analyze video of teachers. This week, though, we did something that we’ve never done before. We watched video with students–Ziyanique Wells and Ayianna Texidor, two inspiring scholars at North Star’s Washington Park High School in Newark. Ziyanique and Ayianna are interested in teaching so English teacher Ashling…