GREAT piece in the April 8 New Yorker by pianist Jeremy Denk… a retrospective on the role of practice in his development. Deeply reflective and insightful. Definitely worth the read though this video gives you a really good sense for a couple of the key sections, especially his first serious teacher’s use of feedback in his practice…
Last night, in Houston, we went out for dinner and my hosts introduced me to fried pickles and Frito pie at dinner, but today Grady Middle School they had something even bigger in store for me. At Grady, the game was on for real! Classrooms were rigorous and content-rich and TLaC-aligned. Here are some highlights: Check…
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…
Spent the morning watching English classes at the Albany Academy (and the Albany Academy for Girls) with my old friend Alisa Scapatici, who appears to go now by “Scap”… at least to the kids. Subject for another blog but I always wanted to have a cool one syllable teacher nickname like that. Incredibly useful to see what the…
My colleague Paul Powell has been working on a training for teachers on writing in math class—how to include more of it and how to use it to deepen understanding and rigor. He’s done some great work in laying out and thinking about all the different types of writing that can happen in a math class…