Doug Lemov's field notes

Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.

01.14.15 On Reading and Building Knowledge: My Morning “Behind Enemy Lines”

This morning I got up early to write.  At about 6:30 I wandered into the living room to find that my daughter was downstairs already, sitting quietly over the heat vent- it was negative five degrees Fahrenheit here this morning.  I needed to get some work done, but my rule is, I work until my kids…


01.16.14 A Vast Army of Terracotta Warriors: Just How DO We Teach History?

Lisa Hansel’s outstanding blog post on the decline in time spent on History  in American schools made reference to a blog post over at EdWeek called “We’re Teaching History Wrong.” It decried our methods of teaching history. This quotation caught my eye: “To the vast majority of students, history is presented as a litany of disconnected…