As many readers of this blog know, we are hard at work developing a middle grades reading curriculum. It’s built around a diverse array of great books and is designed to implement research on the importance of intentionally building background knowledge, as well as to develop fluency with complex texts and increase opportunities for students to…
The “Stack Audit” is one of my favorite tools teachers and leaders can use to study and learn from their work with students. I describe it more fully here but the gist of it is: You gather as many examples as you can of a specific type of work (the Do Nows or Exit Tickets given…
My most popular post of 2014 so far was my post on the Stack Audit, which is one of my favorite tools for understanding, managing and improving what we do as an organization, especially a decentralized, autonomous and creative one. One reader–Christy–asked for some details on how we do it. At first i didn’t think there’d…
I just finished a chapter on writing in the classroom for TLAC 2.0. In the chapter I describe a scene in which some teachers and I realized we needed more powerful tools to hold students accountable for their written lives in the classroom. The solutions to that challenge are a big reason why there’s a whole…