I’m closing in on my manuscript deadline on my new book, The Coach’s Guide to Teaching. The sense of urgency–some might call it desperation–is palpable. But I’ve just finished Chapter 4, which is about Checking for Understanding. Here’s an excerpt to whet your appetite. Hope you enjoy John Wooden was among the greatest coaches of the…
When I do workshops for soccer coaches I routinely show them videos of amazing classroom teachers at work and we talk about how to adapt and apply the ideas they use in a coach’s setting. One of the videos I show coaches most frequently is of Denarius Frazier, one of the best math teachers I know….
Wanted to take a moment to share a really lovely and elegant video from Narlene Pacheco’s kindergarten classroom at Partnership NYC’s Immaculate Conception School in the Bronx. Narlene’s teaching demonstrates a lot of elements of the Check for Understanding (CFU) technique, most of all Tracking Not Watching– the idea that careful observation for…
Yesterday was one of the most intellectually intense days I’ve had in some time, and I came to realize some important things about Check for Understanding. I’m going to try to summarize some of them here. 1) Check for Understanding is quite possibly the single most important group of techniques in terms of building relationships…
We’ve spent this past year working with Freedom Prep, a network of 4 high-performing schools in Memphis. The goal for us is to help them take their program to the next level, and the journey has been a rich one–the team at Freedom Prep is dedicated, smart and insightful and their schools are bright, warm,…