Doug Lemov's field notes

Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.

07.27.20 An Excerpt from The Coach’s Guide to Teaching, Chapter 5: Building Culture

The Coach’s Guide to Teaching, my book for sports coaches on developing athletes through better teaching, hits the shelves this winter. Meanwhile I’m trying to get the manuscript buttoned up. I’ve shared examples from some of the other chapters here, here and here. This excerpt is from the beginning of the chapter on Building Culture which…


03.06.13 Annals of Coaching: Chris Apple’s Desert Island Drill

After my previous post, I got kind of intrigued with the idea of a Desert Island Drill.  I think it’s important as a coach or teacher to invest heavily in your best exercises and to leverage the benefit of re-using and adapting things your students have learned to do efficiently. The only problem was that the…