Doug Lemov's field notes
Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.09.10.13 A Few Minutes with Kathleen Porter-Magee
03.21.13 The Art of the Sentence
Over the past few years I’ve come to believe more and more strongly in the power of the sentence as a tool for developing proficiency in reading and writing. The fundamental problem, for students who don’t write or read as well as they could, is often that they aren’t good enough at creating sentences that capture…
02.03.13 Theme, defined. At last! At least almost.
Theme, I’ve always thought, is one of the most important concepts we (English and reading teachers, I mean) teach and also one that almost no one can really define. This should probably suggest that we don’t understand it very well either. And this is cause for concern. We all talk about theme… but can we define…
12.07.12 Rainforests, Euthanasia and Embedding Non-fiction
Those of you who have been to our reading workshops are up-to-date on “Embedded Non-fiction”—the idea of teaching non-fiction by combining it with a novel. Rather than reading de-contextualized articles to practice reading non-fiction—the Civil War today; the naked mole rat tomorrow—you’d choose topics that develop and add depth to topics raised by the novel you’re…