Doug Lemov's field notes

Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.

09.30.20 Online Turn & Talk with Ben Esser

Turn & Talk is a key tool for building Participation Ratio in a bricks and mortar classroom. It’s not too different online where the use of breakout rooms allows us to replicate it with decent fidelity. Even though it involves the use of breakout rooms we still call the technique Turn & Talk because we think…


07.28.20 Darryl Williams’ Framework for Online Lessons

My colleague Darryl Williams leads our partnership work, where we work directly with schools to help them achieve their vision of high-quality equitable instruction in every classroom. Because he spends so much time working directly with schools as they implement, he’s often the first to propose solutions to emerging challenges, and with COVID-mandated online learning on…


05.13.20 Means of Participation Online with Ben Esser

As you know we’ve been watching and posting a ton of video of great online teaching. We posted this great clip of Alonzo Hall and Linda Fraser’s A+ procedures and routines. We posted this great clip of Ben Esser ‘dissolving the screen.’ Today I want to share another clip of Ben, here taking a page from…


04.30.20 “Dissolving the Screen” in Ben Esser’s Online Classroom

In our work supporting remote teaching, we’ve been using the term Dissolve the Screen to describe one of the key tools we see successful teachers using. To “dissolve the screen” is to heighten students’ awareness of the back-and-forth exchange that still exists between their teacher and themselves so they feel it more strongly. To connect this…


05.15.19 How Does Pacing Work? Ask Ben Esser!

Next year we’re re-working our Engaging Academics workshop to spend more time on the techniques teachers use to manage their Pacing–to make a lesson feel fresh,exciting and new even while it lingers on a key topic for a sustained period of time–to make learning substantive and rigorous but to also ensure sustained attention from students. This…