ŷ������

A: It’s a Mountain

��

Tom Kane has about the extent of the academic losses students have suffered as a result of pandemic. I recommend it, in particular, because Kane does such an outstanding job of putting the extent of the losses in their practical context.

“In fall 2021,�� Kane begins, “Students at low-poverty schools that stayed remote had lost the equivalent of 13 weeks of in-person instruction. At high-poverty schools that stayed remote, students lost the equivalent of 22 weeks.��

Over the course of the article, Kane compares a 22 week loss of learning to the likely benefit of proposed responses.

As a leading educational researcher, Kane is better positioned than the rest of us to understand exactly what a 22-week loss in learning means and he observes that he found “the size of the losses startling�� in particular because ��Very few remedial interventions have ever been shown to produce benefits equivalent to 22 weeks of additional in-person instruction.��

So, for example: “A over the course of an entire school year has been gains equivalent to about 10 weeks of in-person instruction,�� Kane notes.�� That is, doing double math classes all year gets you just shy of half way. The data on double reading classes is less compelling. (Probably because reading is so complex and so poorly taught.)

High-dosage tutoring, which a lot of people have suggested and which is very expensive and complex to implement (note: I am NOT arguing against it, just making a point) is, Kane notes, “one of the few interventions with that comes close, producing an average gain equivalent to 19 weeks of instruction.��

A trained tutor working with one to four students at a time, three times a week for a whole year only partially gets you the equivalent of 22 months in other words.

But, Kane goes on, “The obvious challenge with tutoring is how to offer it to students on an enormous scale. To eliminate a 22-week instruction loss would require providing a tutor to every single student in a school.�� Even the most ambitious plan so far, Tennessee’s, would serve just one out of 12 students in the targeted grades. Again this is not an argument against tutoring. It just puts the size of the problem in context.

Kane concludes: “Given the magnitude and breadth of the losses, educators should not see tutoring as the sole answer to the problem. School systems need a patch big enough to cover the hole.��

There isn’t an intervention we know of that’s robust enough. We’re going to need several. And, I’d point out, the single most productive intervention is much better teaching and much better curriculum is every single classroom- that, to me at least, is the thing that will make the difference. But of course that requires massive structural changes like better professional development, more flexibility in hiring decisions and a commitment as a sector to the science of learning.

And probably an elimination of other distractions.

Perhaps the first step is seeing clearly just how big the problem is. Now that we do (or should) it’s time to get rolling. My colleagues Denarius Frazier, Hilary Lewis and Darryl Williams and I have just finished a book on some of the things we think schools can do. It’ll be out in the early autumn but i’ll be sharing some excerpts from it here.

��

��

The post appeared first on .

Yesterday: a profoundly misguided article in the Guardian claiming that schools should stop weighing kids down with knowledge and set them free in a world of problem solving. Misguided because you can’t think critically about things you don’t have knowledge about- which almost proves the point. You write misguided articles about learning when you don’t know the science of learning.

Today: excellent follow up by the always excellent Adam Boxer:

The idea that learning the "facts" of science is somehow boring is just so obviously ridiculous.

Awe and wonder spring from knowledge, they aren't dampened by it.

�� Adam Boxer (@adamboxer1)

This resonated with me massively. It’s the thing people who are skeptical of knowledge understand least. Giving kids the knowledge to think about things isn’t boring but inspiring. It lights the room on fire.

See for example this video of the amazing Christine Torres teaching vocabulary.

Notice what she does here. Instead of asking kids to guess at the word ‘caustic,�� she simply tells them what it means. She starts by giving them knowledge and facts. But then she asks them to apply their knowledge to solve problems and to think about what they now know. And look at how the respond. They love it! They could not be any happier. In part because the playing field is leveled. Fun interesting questions are asked that everyone can attempt to answer because they have the knowledge to engage.

Wonder, as Adam beautifully put it, springs from knowledge.

The post appeared first on .

I tried my hand at leading a small group training session with my friend James Beeston last week.

I’m not a coach full time or “for real�� but I love and write about coaching and I’ve dying to try my hand at working with players around the idea of deception and disguise.

So off James and I went and my favorite part happened during a very simple passing exercise we did at the outset when my intervention was highly unsuccessful and James�� was highly successful.

This segment begins with three players passing the ball in a triangle. I’m pointing out to them that disguising what they do WITH the ball is different from disguising what they will do BEFORE they receive it.

I think this is super important. 1) Fooling an opponent with a feint before you get the ball is better than fooling him with a touch once you have it because it’s faster and creates an advantage earlier. 2) Players often get into a habit of using disguise only in certain points of their game. I was trying to get players to attend to and experiment with deception at different times- to broaden their conception of how to be deceptive.

Anyway one of the players made a really nice move to feint towards the ball and then let it run by his body. This is one of my favorite moves as it can create a window of space much faster–and thus in more situations–than a clever touch on the ball.�� I wanted other players to replicate and adapt it.

So I stopped them and described what he did�� with a vague description and a half-effort at a demo.

And then James stepped in- and what he did was much much better. You can instantly see the results in the way the players we’re working with start using his idea. But more importantly it tells us a lot about teaching and learning on the field.

SO first of all here’s my lousy intervention and then James�� very good one�� let the video roll and you can see the players are really successful at using the idea he’s given them.

What’s the difference between what James did (good) and what I did (bad)?

The first thing James does is give the concept he’s teaching a name: the Jab Step.Then he creates a very clear picture by modeling it multiple times in different ways.This combination: having a clear, detailed picture of an idea and a discrete name for it conjures it into being. Suddenly it is a “chunk�� of knowledge and players begin to 1) see it everywhere and thus learn from it more and 2) conceive of it as one idea they can manipulate etc.

I say: Disguise before you receive the ball. Try checking in to the ball like you are going to receive this way and then snap back and take it this way.

I am describing.

James says: Try a jab step. As the ball is coming in�� jab with the front foot. The ball comes across and you you’re out the other way. Let me show you again. I �Ჹ���� and I’m out.

As he’s naming the thing he wants them to do he’s modeling it. Notice how many time he models it and how differently.

at :25 he models what the whole move looks like.at :27 he models again but now only the key movement of the jab, in isolation and without the ball. But notice how he says the word “jab�� again as his foot comes down to peg the name to the image in players minds.at :30 he is very subtly modeling again, this time the second part of the move where the ball rolls across his body and he plays away at 90 degree.then at :37 he models the whole thing again, now that players understand the component parts. “I’m stepping�� he says as he jabs, to emphasize with his toe of voice the intensity of the action.

��

The whole thing takes 20 seconds or so and now players have what i never gave them: a clear picture attached to a name. Really you can only conceptualize what you can name. So James has conjured this idea of the jab step into being, and you can see what happens.They put that chunk to good use right away!

So again a Distinct Name + Clear and Precise Picture = a Chunk of Knowledge players can use and encode in memory.

The post appeared first on .

I had the pleasure of visiting a few schools in Memphis last week with Darryl Williams, Teneicesia White and Joaquin Hernandez, including Believe Memphis Academy, which uses our Reading Reconsidered English Curriculum. Among the many highlights were some of the great lesson preparation moves teachers used to get ready to teach (and adapt!) the units.

For example we loved the way fourth grade teacher Starr Garrett (using our fifth grade Esperanza Rising Unit) changed a accountable independent read to a FASE (or, as we used to call it, Control the Game [CTG] read.)

One of the best ways to make a challenging text come to life for students–but to keep the challenging text–is to read it with them, the teacher reading some and modeling expressive fluency and students practicing developing the same. Great move by Starr here!

We also loved the way Starr prepared in advance for areas of potential misunderstanding. She had, in TLAC parlance, anticipated error.

Here she’s anticipated that two terms teachers are deeply familiar with–literal and metaphorical meanings–might be unclear to students so she scripted in quick and accurate kid-friendly definitions, just like you’d do with vocabulary.�� (In case you can’t read it the question asks students to annotate for literal and metaphorical reasons why Pam Munoz Ryan might have titled her chapter “Peaches.�� Starr’s notes say, for literal, “We’re really talking about peaches,�� and for metaphorical, “comparing peaches to something else.��

Upstairs, Starr’s colleague Dominique Clark was using our A Raisin in the Sun unit. It included a nonfiction passage about post-WWII economic domestic economic conditions.�� As she prepped she did several insightful things.

��

First, she too anticipated a word that is obvious to adults but might not be to students: “veteran.�� She jotted a quick, precise kid-friendly definition into her packet.

Then as you can see, she prepared carefully for ways that students might not fully grasp the article’s meaning given that some would probably lack background knowledge.�� She wrote out a few “back pocket questions�� (BPQs) that she could use in case they were confused. Having thought of them in advance allowed her to make them precise and useful.�� “Seeing that the economy was in great condition after the war, how do you assume veterans will be treated back home?�� she wrote.

Later, she paraphrased a tricky passage–“it certainly aided veterans to better themselves…”–with a gloss she would use with students: “veterans got opportunities to make themselves better and provide for their families.��

Lots of times when we show video of a great lesson the assumption is that all of the work is done in the moment by a great teacher. These examples from Starr and Dominique’s classrooms show how critical preparation–asking: How will I deliver this lesson? and What will be challenging for students?–is for success!

The post appeared first on .

I’m writing to share a bit of organizational news, which is that after 15 fantastic years at Uncommon Schools, the Teach Like a Champion Team will be moving. On July 1, we’ll become an independent organization within Together Education, which supports and develops education nonprofits as they start-up or make significant organizational changes.

First, about the change: It’s a little change rather than a big one and mostly relates to operations. Our work is increasingly outward-facing and involves an incredible team of people spread out across the country. This move will allow us to have more flexibility as an organization, which will help us provide optimal support to the schools we work with and to our fantastic staff. Uncommon runs 57 amazing schools- schools we are proud to have supported and learned from- but there are challenges inherent in trying to also provide a smaller group within it with the sort of flexibility it needs as a teaching R&D and training shop.

We’ve worked alongside Uncommon Schools for more than a year to plan this transition and will remain “in the family�� and closely connected. We’ve designed it mutually to make sure we continue learning from–and with–each other. It goes without saying that we will do everything we can to contribute to Uncommon’s ongoing success and we know that commitment is mutual as we grow.

Second, about Together Education: Together is “a non-profit startup studio�� with the mission of helping start “enduring, equity-driven, scalable solutions to our most pressing education challenges.�� Us, in other words. Even if we’re not exactly a start-up, we are increasingly working in new fields such as curriculum development and long-term consulting and partnership with schools and networks beyond Uncommon, and we want to get those parts right. Not coincidentally, Together Education is run by our long-time colleague and a mentor Norman Atkins, and one of the biggest benefits of the change is that we get his guidance and support in (re)-designing our work and strategy in new fields as we pursue a changing portfolio of projects such as our middle grade—and soon, we hope, high school—reading curriculum.

If you attend our workshops and use our training materials or are a school we partner with, you will probably notice very little change- as we continue to focus on what helps you run the best schools humanly possible for the families you serve.

So here’s to a small change, the ongoing partnership of the colleagues we’ve worked beside all along, Uncommon Schools, and a new home not too far from the nest.

The post appeared first on .

Cooking up something for hungry veterans!

We’re experimenting with a new kind of video-learning here at TLAC.�� Keystone Videos—new in TLAC 3.0–are extended videos (most are about 10 minutes long) intended to show a longer arc of a teacher’s lesson where they use multiple techniques in combination. They are not just longer but more complex and nuanced.

Our team developed these keystones to support teachers in seeing more of the big picture of when and why to use particular techniques. They often show how techniques are adapted and combined and what the culture and ethos of exceptional classrooms look like.

We hope keystones complement our traditional video clips, which tend to be edited quite tightly so that the technique itself is easy for novices to see and incorporate into their own practice.�� As an added bonus we think these keystone video provide an outstanding development opportunity for master teachers—richer video, we think, will yield richer conversation on a more complex range of topics.

Since there’s so much to be learned about how best to leverage the strengths of these keystones �� we’re opening up the TLAC test kitchen—see picture…that’s us hard at work—to those who want to study these longer more complex videos with us to expand their knowledge.

��

��

The post appeared first on .

A Master of Culture Building

As you probably know if you’re a football/soccer fan Jesse Marsch was appointed manager of Leeds United this week. He’ll be coming in on the heels of the legendary Marcelo Bielsa. Becoming manager of a club like Leeds is an incredibly high profile appointment for any coach- x100 for an American soccer coach. x1000 for trying to replace Bielsa.��

��I’m a huge admirer of Marsch’s- and for the record a huge admirer of Bielsa’s. Conveniently, a big part of Chapter 5 of Coach’s Guide to Teaching is taken from discussions with Jesse about how he builds culture. For those Leeds and US Soccer supporters who are on tenterhooks, I thought i’d share a few vignettes that reveal a bit about Jesse and what he’s like as a coach:

“When I came to New York,�� former New York and now Salzburg Reb Bull FC manager Jesse Marsch told me, “I realized that positive energy was really important to me. The feeling of wanting to work. All of us. Of loving effort. I wanted to be about that every day. It was important to create the environment physically and to embody it. I wanted them to see that I was first there in the morning and left last at night. When people saw me, I was them to see that I loved being there. To have them see me smiling, happy to see them. I wanted them to hear me thank them for the work they do.�� I learned this myself when I visited Marsch at the Red Bulls�� training facility in New Jersey. I arrived early one morning with few people around. I poked my head into the first office by the door, expecting to find a reception desk and saw instead��. Marsch himself, smiling, in the midst of greeting a player. He invited me and a colleague in and welcomed us. The energy was palpable and his expression of culture the first thing I experienced because he had planned it that way. He had moved his office to the place where he could shape the culture he wanted. It wasn’t just that his office door was always open it was that it was always busy. People constantly coming and going, Marsch greeting smiling, asking about their families. Players and staff. He knew everyone’s name. Everyone was important.

But he went further. “Ali Curtis was Sporting Director at the time He was big on measurables. When I started putting together a description of how we wanted to play, he kept asking me about KPIS [Key Performance Indicators]. ‘How will we know if we are successful at playing the way we want to play?�� He’d ask me. So I came up with words to describe what I wanted that we would try to measure. I wanted guys to be all in every day. I wanted everyone to empty the tank and leave nothing on the field, so those ideas became part of our terminology: ‘empty the tank.����

You can hear the level of intentionality of the design in Marsch’s story. He reflected deeply on who he wanted the team to be, on the field and off. He planned how his culture would be expressed, thought about how he’d measure it. This is the Yin: Designed Culture. But he wasn’t done.

“I asked the players to define it. ��I said, “What does ‘empty the tank�� mean to YOU guys?�� They got together and defined it as ‘giving everything you have every day to the group especially when it’s difficult for you.�� And so that’s what we used as our definition. Because it can’t just be about me; it has to be a reflection of everybody involved.�� You can hear in this part of the story the Yang starting to emerge. Shared culture. His concept; their definition.

��We developed other phrases. Like Roger Banister.�� Marsch continued. This was intended to evoke the story of Roger Bannister who set out to break the four-minute mile when people said it could not be broken. “When after years he finally broke it, something like 23 other guys broke it in the next ten years. It tells you that fatigue is mental. Break that barrier! That’s what the word means. I had them read the article and then we talked about it.”�� There were more phrases. Dozens of them. They became the language of the team. The expressed its ideals and culture.

“Muhammad Ali was another one,�� Marsch said, referring to the phrases they used to mark the touch-points of their evolving culture “In NY they had never won [The MLS cup]. They wanted to be the first to win so badly. It resulted in a lot of fear, actually, at playoff time. They were waiting to fail. That’s where�� Muhammad Ali came from. I read this article where he said, “All that talk. I was trying to convince myself that I was a champion, could be a champion, before I actually was a champion.�� I told them that story and we used the phrase. We’re going to Muhammad Ali the hell out of this, I told them.�� The phrase meant something like walk right up to opportunity bravely and with a bit of swagger; act like you’ve been there.

* ���������������������� *������������������������ *������������������������ *

“[Culture] cannot merely top down,�� Jesse Marsch told me. “If the players hold each other accountable it always has more weight. It’s interesting though, when I got to [Red Bull] Leipzig”—as sort of apprenticeship where he coached in between New York and Salzburg—”my office couldn’t be out front, so I had to adapt. I had to constantly spend my time out walking around.�� Now this team [Salzburg], the win all the time “In NY we had to teach them how to win. This team I have to teach how to lose. That it’s normal to lose. Its normal to fail. It’s the only way to get better.�� I’m sure there’s a word for that on the wall in Salzburg, though I didn’t ask what it is. The principle at work here is the second one. Same coach; same plan. But different team and so the culture has to evolve.

In discussing Marsch’s efforts to build culture, though, I have not gotten to what may be the most important part yet. ��Because the key to culture is building habits. It’s what you do every day, often when you don’t realize you’re doing it, that expresses what you believe. All the talk and the painting of the walls would be meaningless unless Marsch could build habits.

His next step was to think as deeply and intentionally about tactical culture on the field as he had about culture more broadly. Taking Curtis�� idea of KPIs, he made a list of the things that made a player a Red Bulls kind of guy-a fit for the team. He started with the defensive side of the ball. “What we did against the ball was always very important to me,�� he recalled so his list included statistics most players would be familiar with–steals and intercepted passes—but also ones Marsch had invented. He again defined new words to describe the details of tactics and culture he wanted on the field, especially when Red Bulls did not have possession: forechecking, hunt the ball, ball thief. Things like that. There was a chart where players got scored individually and in groups. “Attitude points.�� The video guy would go back after the game and score all the interceptions�� “After game if a player won the overall attitude points, we would have him pick his song for the highlight video and in it we’d show the moments of his attitude points to the whole team.��

But it wasn’t just games.�� If you want to build culture on the field the same rules for building culture apply: habits are everything. Referring to the scoring of the hidden aspects of on-field culture, he said, “We did in practice as well. We’d have individuals and teams that would win.�� Players hunted the ball when defending in games because they hunted the ball when defending in training. It was their habit. And they hunted the ball in training because Marsch and co built it into the culture. It was everywhere.

Many of Marsch’s measurables were tiny things, by the way. Ball-oriented meant staying compact when pressing and controlling space in front of the ball, fore-checking meant preventing an opponent from turning with the ball and facing forward. Some coaches might call an idea like ‘hustle�� measurable but that would be far too vague for Marsch. Culture was about the tiny details that would make us who we wanted to be, captured in precise vocabulary. Only then could it be turned into habit. “Changes that seem small at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them,�� writes James Clear. “In the long run the quality of our lives”—and you might add our sporting endeavors—”depends on the quality of our habits.��

The chart is a funny idea. It seems a bit juvenile as far as management tools for professional athletes go but clinical psychologist Russell Carlson mentions something similar when he gives Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller advice in The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: “Start a sticker chart,�� he tells them. “Ten stars and you get a burrito�� Stars can be used for anything you want to reinforce. The first rule of child psychology is that it applies throughout all of life. They will scoff at it and three days later be checking out how many stars they have.�� I read that passage to Marsch and he laughed. “I used to think ‘Oh they’re professionals,’�� he said. “I thought ‘it will be too cheesy.�� But I’m never afraid to try things. So I tried it and it worked. Now when someone has an idea, I think: let’s try it.�� If Luis Robles wanted to have Olympics in preseasons, I’d say, “Yeah, let’s try it.��

Again, I am not necessarily arguing for a chart here. The point is the importance of measuring and recognizing what you value so it turns beliefs into habits. “What gets measured gets done,�� the management adage goes. The outcome was Marsch’s Red Bulls playing tireless relentless team oriented pressing defense without the ball and doing it joyfully as if they were wired to. It was part of the team’s DNA. ��Could you accomplish that via other tools? Of course. If you were a small club with limited resources could you have players observe for and chart their teammates subtle actions during games to call them out? Sure? Could you end practice by calling out one tiny easily overlooked moment that expressed “who we are as a team��? Could you let players? Yes. yes and yes. The point is that public recognition is powerful tool in building shared habits.

* ���������������������� *������������������������ *������������������������ *

In chapter 4 I discussed the phrase culture of error, which describes a classroom—or a training environment—in which learners willingly expose their mistakes to their teachers and peers. They do this because they believe doing so will help them to learn. When this occurs it is far easier to find and remediate the gap between ‘I taught it�� and ‘they learned it.�� In chapter 6 I’ll tell share some scenes from Iain Munro’s training where he encourages players not to hide behind what they can do well but to push themselves to try—and therefore fail, at first—at what they cannot do. This is critical to their learning. These are examples of a characteristic learning cultures and high-performing cultures often have in common: psychological safety, which is what psychologists refer to as a state where moderate risk-taking is tolerated, people can speak with honesty and candor, and where creativity flourishes. When Jesse Marsch sought to get NY Red Bulls over their fear of failure, he painted the phrase fear to fail = failure on the wall.

He delivered a similar message to his Salzburg team despite their differences. Mistakes should be studied rather than punished.

* ���������������������� *������������������������ *������������������������ *

“When I first went to Leipzig 7,�� Marsch told me, “There were a series of individual rectangular tables where everyone ate. They were all separate. It would always be the African players at one table. The French players a another. The German player at another. Staff over here. The first thing I said was we have to totally change the meal dynamic, so the tables are continuous and there’s no separation. We have to sit together. And then we have to tell them why. I tried to bring subtle pressure to sit down where the next seat was. Not to sit where its safe. And then in time you’d start to see on the road that the guys were mixing more there as well. The routine became that we would change where we sat.��

The post appeared first on .

We’re excited to share this fantastic video of Jen Brimming’s English lesson at .�� Jen and her colleagues have been working hard to make their classrooms more energetic and dynamic across the school and have been focusing on adding Turn and Talk and Call and Response into their common methods of participation to support Everybody Writes and Cold Call but also up the energy level.

At the same time they’re been working on being really clear about Means of Participation- signalling to students how they should answer each question.

Finally, Jen’s been working on using active practice to make vocabulary instruction more productive. Basically that means: 1) start with the definition 2) ask students to play with the word and apply it in different settings and context to build deep word knowledge 3) have a bit of fun with words.

You can see all of that in this great clip:

We loved the way she balanced quick writing prompts (Everybody Writes) with Turn & Talks to build students�� confidence and extend their thinking before they were called on to speak aloud.

We loved how crisp, engaging and energetic Jen’s cues for each form of participation were. As a result the room crackles to life.

We loved how this helped Jen achieve not only universal participation but high quality thinking about worthy questions.

We loved how well students thought about and understood the word “reprehensible,�� applying it to examples from several of the books they’d read.

All in all it’s great stuff�� so great that we convinced Jen to chat about the work they’ve been doing at Marine Academy with our own Jaimie Brillante.�� We’ll share highlights from that interview in a coming blog post.�� In the meantime enjoy the video and please join us in thanking Jen and her students for sharing their work!

The post appeared first on .

Recently I received a note on Twitter from Sean Morrisey, a self-proclaimed data nut, who uses the with his fifth graders at Pinehurst Elementary School in Hamburg, NY.�� In his first year using the curriculum he has some interesting takeaways that I wanted to pass along.

Sean started the year with the unit Bud, Not Buddy by Paul Christopher Curtis and then did Number the Stars by Lois Lowry.�� Each unit, about 6 weeks in length, immersed students in the novel as well as nonfiction articles to build their background knowledge around significant history, geography, and culture. Upon completion of his second unit, his students took their winter literacy assessment and a fluency assessment.�� The results? From fall to winter, his students showed an average of 133% growth. A typical year, according to Sean, often yields about 50-55% growth.

Fluency is a huge driver of all literacy outcomes—it and vocabulary are two of the strongest correlatives to long term success in all subject areas.�� But it also struck me given this data on student independent reading rates I recently saw in Jean Twenge’s must-read study of young people’s habit’s, iGen.

The number of students who read a book daily has decreased three-fold in the past three decades, with the steepest declines in the last decade due the proliferation of the phone. Starting in 2011 or so, more 12th graders did not read a single book on their own all year than read something daily.

We should do everything we can to make students interested active outside readers and we should also do everything we can to build fluency inside of class. We should fight hard for the book but also realize that how we read in class matters because increasingly it is the only reading many students will do.

So I was ecstatic that the RR curriculum—with its heavy influence on shared expressive reading–had the effect of boosting fluency�� For what it’s worth Sean’s is not the only classroom where we’re seeing major fluency spikes.

But one of the most interesting things Sean shared was about his students�� changes as independent readers.�� Doing knowledge-intensive book units piqued their interest and suddenly their IR choices were geared towards deeper reading along the lines of what they’d been reading about in class.�� While reading Number the Stars, for example, he encouraged his students to read another book that took place during WWII.�� His students met that challenge with ease, excitedly choosing multiple books from the WWII era for independent reading.�� Not only was their engagement in reading outside of class increasing, but the content and rigor of that independent reading was too.�� Never had he seen 5th graders seeking out The Diary of Anne Frank.�� ��One student who he categorized as a struggling reader, went from the 27th percentile in the fall to the 51st percentile in the winter. And this student was hungrily seeking out rigorous texts about world war II for independent reading. A fire had been lit.

“During the Number the Stars unit the kids read a lot of books within this time period and books that were a challenge like ‘The Boy on the Wooden Box�� or ‘The Girl on Shindler’s List,'�� Sean observed.�� “I think that kids can handle longer books when they have more background knowledge. It is so much easier to understand stories that you have background for especially vocabulary as well. Think about words such as persecute, tolerate, refuge, flee, survival in books discussing refugees. Book choices this year have changed �� less fantasy and realistic fiction is being read and much more historical fiction is being read. Students still really like graphic novels, but they are now choosing�� themes/topics that we have discussed in class around novel units.��

The post appeared first on .

Writing is a profound tool for thinking and learning. “The discipline of writing something down is the first step in making it happen,�� noted Lee Iococca. To write it is to prioritize it; recall it to your attention; restate, elaborate on and clarify the idea. All these things build memory and understanding. Think it and you will probably forget it; write it and you’re likely to remember.

Writing locks it down in memory but it also often unleashes an idea. The poet W. H. Auden said that he never knew what a poem was going to say until he had written it. Discovery often results from putting it down on paper.

Writing, I think, is untapped for athletes�� it could and probably should play a much more significant role in their life and learning. So this is the first of (at least) two posts about the potential of writing for athletes. The second will look at the role writing might play in the growing portion of time top athletes spend studying video and engaged in other classroom type tasks. But in this first part I’ve tried to reflect about how writing could be a useful part of daily on-the-field training.

*������������������ *������������������ *������ �� ���� *������������������ *������������������ *

My daughter has spent January training with Todd Beane and co at TOVO Academy. One of the first things that struck me was that they keep journals and write after training. In part that’s because Todd’s goal is to build complete players in the broadest sense, and reflection and self-awareness are key parts of that. But the writing they do is more than journaling of the “here’s how i felt; here’s how i did�� variety. (Not that that’s a bad thing. Yaya Toure apparently kept a journal of every game and training; perhaps that’s why he was such a perceptive player and teammate). It sounded surprisingly analytical so I asked Todd to send me a few examples of what players wrote. Here’s one of them:

What struck me right away was the use of diagramming. I’d never thought about that. But it struck me that this helped players both to remember and be attentive to the spaces (physically, visually) as they train- to see the design through their coaches�� eyes. It caused players to, as Todd put it, “lay out a spatial relationship formed of triangles and diamonds.”�� It’s reinforcing the building blocks (“geons�� if you’ve read Coaches Guide to Teaching) of spatial understanding.�� Todd compared this to architectural drawings. Players are sketching the principles of space that build up to 11v11 play and positioning more clearly.

It’s also worth nothing had the players marked up the diagrams. Words plus images is a very powerful combination. The visual increases the amount of knowledge players can process and remember (see Oliver Caviglioli’s Dual Coding for more on this) and the language builds understanding. “Diagrams + words keeps a better record of the experience,�� Todd said.

My daughter had one page where she added an arrow to a diagram and wrote: “this run when marked…��

She’s linked her understanding of space with her desire the change her actions within it.

Here’s another example from one of Todd’s players (i circled some things i thought were interesting)

At the top the player is reinforcing a moment where the coaching point (move the ball to move the opposition) created a memorable outcome: “[We] kept bouncing that ball back and forth and once the defenders came out I split them and found the space in behind.”�� Remembering and memorializing a break through like this will help prioritize it in memory and just maybe lead to it being replicated.

In the second example the player is restating the key principle: “need to make sure your touch can take [you] past the defender so you can find space on the other side.�� Again this is an idea that perhaps was a notion vaguely installed in memory that is now clear- crafted as a sort of personal principle of play.

A tiny last thought. “A lot of my guys,�� one coach of professional athletes said to me, “they weren’t always successful in school. They don’t especially like to write. Many of them would struggle to write in a journal.��

In many ways I think people learn to make writing part fo their lives because they come to find pleasure or value in it. Even at the professional level, even with adults, I think we can change behaviors and grow people’s capacity off the field too. And I suspect that a lot of athletes might surprise their coaches in a positive way. But even in the worst case scenario- even if it were true that you really did have a player who simply could not write, the idea of diagramming creates a powerful and useful alternative way to process ideas and might even over time give the athlete and opportunity and an incentive to add language in small pieces- this would be especially likely if they found the writing valuable and useful.

The post appeared first on .