I spent the day visiting Freedom Prep HS in Memphis today. There were lots of highlights, but I wanted to write about one classroom in particular- and specifically about a single phrase the teacher used that was simple, brilliant and useful to others. The teacher was Torian Black. He teaches 9th grade African-American History. During…
I have no business writing about the arts. But my middle daughter is artistic. She draws and takes photographs. And watching her learn has led me to reflect on artistic creativity. I note that while I love the arts deeply and feel strongly about students getting access to serious instruction in them, I am a dilettante…
I had a great conversation this week with a group of colleagues from TNTP about a concept I only have a not-very-helpful, made-up word to describe: de-silo-fication. The word refers to structuring training so that connected and separate topics don’t seem disconnected, especially when one of them requires urgent and intense focus in the…
I recently stumbled on a short video that a colleague in the UK, ‘MR WJ’ (aka, Lloyd Williams-Jones) made describing three TLAC techniques he uses: Cold Call, No Opt Out, and Show Call. MR WJ TLAC from TLAC Blog on Vimeo. He’s very gracious with the praise… which I appreciate though I am also a bit…
We’re writing a reading curriculum (hooray!) and that means daily review of lesson plans for me, which is great fun and lots of learning. Thought I’d share some examples of how we do it from some recent lessons. Our vocabulary goal is to use lots of active practice to build word knowledge. Start with a…