Author: Doug Lemov
Reasons to read:
- This book will almost certainly have a profound, positive impact on your practice.
- Doug Lemov combines real world examples of excellent practice with workable strategies to implement in your own classroom.
- Every teacher can benefit from reading this, regardless of their level of experience.
Key notes:
- ‘No opt-out’ – It is ok for pupils to to ask a clarifying question in response to your question. It is not ok for them to choose not to respond.
- Lower and middle class pupils favour talking in ‘restricted code’ – this is reflected in their writing (use of it, they, there instead of nouns). Promoting and explaining the use of embellished code in pupils writing and speaking when in an academic setting is a simple way of increasing attainment and teaching professional behaviours.
- Stick with your pupils and let them know you will be sticking with them regardless of their presented behaviours.
- ‘Dot around’ – as you circulate and notice a mistake, simply put a dot on the page. Afterwards, you can ask ‘who got a dot and managed to correct their mistake?’ This encourages self-reflection and has a low transaction cost. This can be developed by RAG coding the dots.
- 5 activity types: 1. Assimilating knowledge directly from a source. 2. Guided practice or questioning. 3. Executing skills without teacher support. 4. Reflecting on an idea – thinking quietly and deeply. 5. Discussing and developing ideas with classmates.
- Switching between the above 5 activity types can increase pace.
- Eradicate downtime from your lessons (do the math over a year)!
- Make the end point / objectives super clear.
- Plan your lessons around the following ratio – questioning:writing:discussion.
- Questioning – increase wait time to promote deep thinking and opt in.
- Cold calling – use the name before the question if supporting an EAL pupil.
- Everybody writes – all pupils organise their thoughts to a high rigor question in writing FIRST. Teacher can assess initial responses and decide who to cold call – this process helps pupils to refine their ideas.
- Read, write opinion/thoughts, discuss, revise opinion/thoughts. This is a very high rigor sequence to get your pupils to follow.
- Discussion – arm pupils with sentence starters to acknowledge and build upon the comments of another pupil. This will increase the quality of classroom discussions and will also teach pupils professional behaviours.
- Every lesson – ask a high rigor question then allow the class to discuss it for 2 minutes exactly. Follow this up with a cold call for answers.