While designing a lesson with a very good high school ELA teacher we got to the Review portion of the lesson. Responding to the...

One of my favorite Seinfeld episodes was "The Yada Yada” episode. The premise of the show was people would be telling a story and leave...

Recently I watched a portion of an interview of Nanci Atwell, the teacher who won the Varkey Foundation’s $1 million prize as the Global...

All schools, as well as all classrooms, are busy enterprises. There are the daily issues, the weekly schedules, the semester goals, and...

Is your staff suffering from Trainer of Trainers Syndrome (TOTS)? What is TOTS: The disappointment/discouragement felt by administration...

In my office I had a sign above my desk that read, “Clarity Precedes Competence”. During the three years I occupied that office, in my...

When I search the internet for Close Reading planning tools I wonder how many teachers are actually accessing these resources which are...

“My students do Close Reading every day at the start of the day. It has really been a great routine for my class”. In a room full of...

“Checking for Understanding” has become a misunderstood educational catch phrase. The one thing that can be agreed upon is that “CFU” is...

Do you have a favorite TV show? Downton Abby? Breaking Bad? The Wire? What all these shows have in common is the serial telling of a...

Maybe I am just a cranky old man, or maybe I do not understand what others are talking about, or maybe both. I recently read an article...

As all new attempts at curriculum reform, the Common Core has generated its’ share of criticism. Looking back at Whole Language, New...

This is the second installment in the series, What are we doing to ourselves? Over the past several weeks parents, college educated...

This is first in a series of blogs about how our baby-bathwater/forest-trees mentalities are making us crazy. One of the ways students...

Q: How do I get my students to be meta-cognitive? It is difficult for my students to explain their thinking. A: Nearly all of us have a...

Let me tell you how this latest educational movie, “Effective Instruction in the Common Core,” ends. The movie ends with a predictable...

With the implementation of the Common Core Standards the publishers are at it again. Materials are merely being relabeled as “For Common...

An article published in Education Week, August 14, 2014, reports teachers feel inadequately prepared for Common Core, even after...

A continuation of The Research Supporting TESS (part 1) The second great influence on the development of what we now know as direct...

Often, when doing teacher training in direct instruction, we are asked about the research behind the model. It is an honest question...