Doug Lemov's field notes

I’m in California this week so have been slow to post and respond to comments…. but the great news (for me) is that I am out here to do a two-day workshop for teachers and leaders at the highly–and justifyably–vaunted Aspire Public Schools.

I’m especially excited because I always learn a ton from the smart and reflective folks at Aspire.   They take the tools we’ve developed and adapt and improve on them.  The fact that many of the top schools and networks and districts do this has resulted in our development, in the last year or two, of 2.0 techniques.  These are basically adaptations and additions to make the original Teach Like a Champion techniques stronger.  One of the 2.0 ideas we’ve recently added is the idea of combining Stretch It to No Opt Out to make it more rigorous and positive.  The idea is that after you go back to a student to make sure the sequence ends with his getting it right, it’s even better if you can ask him another question to let him apply the idea, show how much he can do, maybe even shine a little.

Just the other day we cut a really great example of a teacher combining Stretch It and No Opt Out, and fittingly, it comes from our colleagues at Aspire Public Schools.

This clip is from the 10^th and 11^th grade math classroom of Sarah Salazar.  She’s just gone over a complex model problem and is about to send her kids off to do more problems like it for homework.  Wisely, she Checks For Understanding, using Cold Call to direct specific questions to a variety of students.  When one of them struggles, she goes to No Opt Out but then follows up by asking him a series of similar questions that let him practice the key skill and show others (and himself) that he can master the skill in question.

Great stuff, Sarah!

And looking forward to seeing all you great Aspire folks tomorrow!

Aspire, Check for Understanding, classrooms, cold call, math, No Opt Out, Stretch It, teach like a champion, teaching techniques, TLAC 2.0, TLAC workshop, Video, Video example