Doug Lemov's field notes

Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.

02.19.15 Elephants and Outsiders: Watch Colleen Driggs Embed Non-Fiction (Video)

I’ve posted a few times recently about a really productive way to get more non-fiction into your classroom and get MUCH more out if it when it’s there.  The idea is called “embedding non-fiction”…  pairing non-fiction articles with fiction texts you are reading. Each text becomes a lens on the other and increases the rate at…


01.29.15 From Reading Reconsidered- Embedding: The Full Story

Posting on embedding non-fiction earlier today made me realize I ought to post something defining the idea more clearly.  Here’s a very early draft of (part of) how Colleen, Erica and I discuss it in Reading Reconsidered. Embedding non-fiction is the process of pairing secondary non-fiction texts (usually non-narrative non-fiction) alongside a primary text in an…


01.29.15 Embedding Non-Fiction in A Single Shard

Colleen, Erica, and I have been toiling away at our forthcoming book on literacy, Reading Reconsidered.  One of the topics we discuss is non-fiction–the importance of reading more of it; the challenges of reading more of it; the importance of knowledge as both a cause and and effect of successful reading.  One of the key ideas…