Doug Lemov's field notes

Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.

05.17.24 Alexander Lisman Checks for Understanding in his Visual Arts Class

  We’ve had quite a few requests lately for examples of Teach Like a Champion techniques in Arts classes so it’s my pleasure to share this clip of Eagle Ridge Academy (Brighton, Colorado) art teacher Alexander Lisman’s Checking for Understanding in which he uses Active Observation and intentional feedback. Let’s set the scene. Alexander’s students are…


05.01.24 My England Travelogue Part 3: A Really Wonderful CFU Workshop in London

  Last week I shared two blog posts here and here about my week-long trip to England the week prior, in which I visited two really fascinating schools. The week ended with a two-day workshop in London on the topic of Checking for Understanding, co-sponsored by Ark Schools (thank you Victor Voutov, the king of workshop…


05.01.24 How Scott Wells Checks for Understanding as His Students Read (with Video)

  We recently shot an amazing round of video in Scott Wells’ classroom at Goldsmith Primary Academy in Walsall…. We generated clip after clip of masterful teaching several of which we’ve already begun sharing in workshops. In fact I had the pleasure of showing a clip of Scott Checking for Understanding to participants at a session…


01.04.24 Managing (Your Own) Working Memory: How Julia Uses Her “Monitoring Key”

  Yesterday I posted about the challenges of managing limits on Working Memory for teachers. We know we’ve got to design our teaching to respond to the challenges the classrooms presents for student’s Working Memory, but we’ve also got to be thinking about the under-acknowledge issue of our own working memory overloads. Walking around the classroom…


03.24.23 Planning for Error: Emma Gray Prepares to Push the Rigor in Number the Stars

One of our favorite topics at TLAC Towers is Checking for Understanding. How do teachers prepare for and react to student errors and misunderstandings? Many of our best videos on the topic are of math teachers–the nature of math makes predicting and sequencing errors a bit simpler than in the humanities, say. So we were especially…