Our weekly video review had us buzzing this week. Among the teachers we watched was Laura Baxter, who teaches 4th grade at Nashville Classical Charter School. I wanted to share a really rich clip of a small and apparently mundane moment from her classroom for a couple of reasons. What first drew us to this clip…
As you may know, we’re writing an English curriculum, my team and I. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, it’s based on the reading of novels, challenging & demanding novels, at every grade level. It’s flexible and modular–teachers and schools can select from a range of books. It’s knowledge-building and writing intensive. It reinforces Close…
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…
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…