Had the pleasure of visiting a couple of really good schools in the midst of “bringing students back” over the past couple of weeks. By “bringing kids back” I mean rebuilding intellectual habits and striving to maximize quality of learning given how much kids have lost in the disrupted previous year(s). One of the clear themes…
We recently spent two days geeking out on Reading and the Common Core at a workshop up here in Albany with 180 of our closest friends from around the country. People left pretty excited about Close Reading and Non-Fiction, but a least a couple of school leaders have followed up with questions about planning, specifically about…
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…
We wrapped up two days of workshops on Ratio on Friday. Ratio is the principle that it’s not whether the teacher gets a mental workout, but whether students do. Our workshops focus on building two types of Ratio, Participation Ratio (who’s engaged in the lesson and how often) and Think Ratio (how rigorous is the cognitive…
Just had a really nice Twitter exchange with UK blogger/teacher David Didau in which we mutually geeked out on the importance of teaching writing by teaching the craft of idea development one sentence at a time– an idea I like to call “Art of the Sentence” and which is going to get a big fat clump…