This is my second of three posts about “common opportunities” to make good classrooms more rigorous. Yesterday I wrote about making it clear to students how you want to them to participate. Today’s post is on the idea of replacing times when we ask students to “agree or disagree” with an answer a classmate has given…
Great teachers are always seeking to make their classrooms as rigorous as possible. Over the next three days, I’ll be sharing thoughts about three ‘common opportunities’ –things I see in place when I observe great classrooms that can often make a big difference—quickly—in good ones. Common Opportunity #1: Improve the rigor of your classrooms by defining…
My very favorite video I’ve watched this week is of 4th grade teacher Emily Badillo at Excellence Girls Academy in Brooklyn. It’s about the best example you’re going to see of the Right is Right technique. But it shows a lot more than that. Here’s some play-by-play: Emily is asking her students about the key facts…
My Practice Perfect co-author Katie Yezzi recently came across a pretty amazing video of Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll talking about practice and his approach to it. Beyond the key takeaway that practice is incredibly important to any performance profession–“Practice is everything,” Carroll says in the video–there are a ton of useful lessons for those…
Found this picture in a blog post by an organization that supports teachers in South Africa, Edupeg. It’s of a teacher named Ms. Shezi who teaches grade 4 at Bonisanani Primary in South Africa. I found it both informative and inspiring: The blog described her class this way: Ms. Shezi already has well established Entry and Exit…