My colleague Dan Cotton, who’s guest posted here and here recently, visited Vicki Hernandez’s 7th Grade Science Class at Troy Prep Middle School a few days ago observing a lesson that made him wish he’d had his video camera. He tried to capture some of what Vicki did in this write-up: A few days ago, I had the…
Twice a week at TLaC Towers we discuss video and other lesson materials from teachers in the field. Last week Dan Cotton and John Costello–two members of our great TLaC team–were really excited by the possibilities of the question one teacher asked in particular. They wrote this reflection. Last week our team watched video of Uncommon…
In this week’s video review meeting at TLaC Towers, we watched a strong teacher struggle through a common moment of teaching: She asked a series of thoughtful and demanding questions about a challenging text, but the result from her students wasn’t what she wanted. Precious few hands went up and silence descended. My colleague Dan Cotton…
We wrapped up two days of workshops on Ratio on Friday. Ratio is the principle that it’s not whether the teacher gets a mental workout, but whether students do. Our workshops focus on building two types of Ratio, Participation Ratio (who’s engaged in the lesson and how often) and Think Ratio (how rigorous is the cognitive…
At our workshops we often talk about the importance of shared vocabulary–the power of being able to communicate accurately, quickly, without ambiguity about technical aspects of performance. This is true whether you are a teacher (“That was great but what if you unbundled your questions a little more and added a “Stretch It”) or a principal;…