Doug Lemov's field notes

Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.

01.04.24 Managing (Your Own) Working Memory: How Julia Uses Her “Monitoring Key”

  Yesterday I posted about the challenges of managing limits on Working Memory for teachers. We know we’ve got to design our teaching to respond to the challenges the classrooms presents for student’s Working Memory, but we’ve also got to be thinking about the under-acknowledge issue of our own working memory overloads. Walking around the classroom…


12.13.23 Lasting Change at Scale: Lessons From Our Work With Harmony Public Schools

  42,000 students and counting…   In October, our Consulting & Partnerships team completed a 30-month partnership (March 2021-September 2023) with Texas’ largest charter school network, Harmony Public Schools. Our role was to help the network refine its vision for instructional leadership, then build training and systems to study progress across its 55 (now 60) schools. …


11.14.23 The Bug That Didn’t (Disprupt Dayla Bedford’s Lesson): A Mini Case Study

  Our weekly team meeting gives us the chance to do what we love most: study great teaching. This week, we had the privilege to study Dayla Bedford of Emma Donnan Elementary School in Indianapolis, IN. Dayla joyfully and skillfully executing a phonics lesson with her first-graders. [We’ll share a longer video of Dayla’s impressive phonics…