Generally speaking, I love novels for English classes, but here are some thoughts on the particular benefits of reading short stories (too): They are compact and allow students to glimpse a whole narrative structure in shorter, comprehensible form. It’s easier to see the conventions of story telling. Because of their shorter length they allow for…
One of the best clips we added to our collection this week was one of the simplest… or maybe it wasn’t that simple… just subtle. My colleague Erica Woolway describes it: The clip shows how Uncommon Collegiate Charter High School math teacher Denarius Frazier uses the 100% tools, especially Radar and Be Seen Looking to keep…
If you’ve seen the first two clips I’ve shared from Nicole Willey’s classroom at Leadership Prep Ocean Hill Elementary Academy, you’ll be thrilled to know there’s still more to come– and that the clip I’m sharing today might just be the most replicable of the batch. Nicole’s Check for Understanding was pretty killer. Her positive touch was…
Chatting with a group of teachers from Saluda County (SC) Public Schools yesterday, I was asked a great question about Cold Call. It reflected a common set of challenges and was such a useful question that I thought I’d share it and some steps that might be helpful for others who have the same challenge. The…
Earlier today I posted about a conversation we’d had at #TLaC towers on the topic of Exit Tickets. John Costello–one of my colleagues on Team TLaC–sent me an email with further thoughts on the post. He focused in particular on the critical importance of depth of information in revealing student thinking (and implicitly on the importance of…