Erica Woolway and I had a great visit to University Prep Middle School in the Bronx yesterday. What a warm and positive school with real rigor and a focus on knowledge. Kids focused, worked hard, took pride in their learning and seemed genuinely happy. One of the classes we especially loved was Spencer Davis’ sixth grade…
UVA cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham and Barbara Davidson of Knowledge Matters were on the Melissa and Lori Love Literacy podcast a few days ago. About ten minutes into the discussion, Willingham gave a fantastic explanation of the role of background knowledge in reading comprehension. I transcribed the key sections below with a few notes of…
I’m reading Daniel Buck’s excellent “What is Wrong with Our Schools” and want to share an idea that’s really useful. In chapter 3, Buck discusses the power of supplemental texts in reading. This is something my colleagues and I refer to as ’embedded nonfiction.” Erica Woolway, Colleen Driggs and I have a chapter on…
Our colleague Ben Rogers at Paradigm Trust, which runs seven school in London and Ipswich, England sent us some video recently of a really well design lesson by Kris Shukla. In the course of a lesson on scientific writing, Kris used four Turn & Talks. Each one was a little different and each one was carefully…
Happiness is one of the most misunderstood of human emotions. My colleagues Denarius Frazier, Hilary Lewis & Darryl Williams and I write about this in Reconnect: Building School Culture for Meaning Purpose and Belonging. Many people define happiness as meaning roughly the same thing as “pleasure.” They assume students will be happy if they are…