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We know that attention is central to every learning task and the quality of attention paid by learners shapes the outcome of learning endeavors.

Part of attentiveness is individual. Some people are more attentive than others and have better skills/habits in terms of their attention.

But is attention also partly social? Does the environment in which students learn influence their attentiveness?

“Attention contagion�� is the idea that attention (or inattention) might spread among students in a learning environment. ������’s a fascinating experiment:

Video of a lecture playing at the front of the room. Two students are watching. One is the subject of the experiment; one is an accomplice of the experimenter- a confederate.

During the experiment the confederate exhibits either ‘attentive behaviors�� (e.g., leaning forward) or ‘inattentive behaviors�� (e.g., slouching).

There are two rounds to the experiment. In the first the student who is the subject can clearly see the student who is the experimenters�� confederate. In the second, the experimenters�� confederate is behind the student who is the subject. The student cannot clearly see him/her.

Question: How will the behaviors of the accomplice student affect the behaviors of the subject?

Answer: Subjects who watched the lecture with an attentive confederate:

1)Reported higher levels of attention
2)Behaved more attentively (e.g. took more notes)
3)Had better memory of the lecture content (i.e. learned more)In both cases!

‘Despite confederates not being visible, participants were still aware of whether confederates were acting attentively or inattentively, and participants were still susceptible to attention contagion. Our findings suggest that distraction is one factor that contributes to the spread of inattentiveness.��

The implications of this are pretty significant. Attention (or the lack of it) is a social phenomenon at least in part. It spreads around a classroom or any learning environment. It is to a degree mutual, social and collective.

By the way there was a later follow-up to this study��

Undergraduate student participants watched a prerecorded lecture along with research confederates who were visible in “webcam video thumbnails.�� The confederates again behaved either attentively or inattentively.

Consistent with previous findings, “students who watched the lecture with attentive (vs. inattentive) confederates reported being more attentive and they learned more of the lecture content—performing 12% better on a post-lecture quiz. They also perceived the lecture as more important, suggesting that social inferences (e.g., “this lecture is important��) may undergird attention contagion.��

Reminds me of a point Peps McCrea makes in the outstanding ‘Motivated Teaching��: The greatest single influence on motivation and behavior is the individual’s perception of the shared norm of peers.

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Review/Think/Decide

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about the challenges of managing limits on Working Memory for teachers. We know we’ve got to design our teaching to respond to the challenges the classrooms presents for student’s Working Memory, but we’ve also got to be thinking about the under-acknowledge issue of our own working memory overloads. Walking around the classroom trying to observe and remember what 30 different students understood (and didn’t) on two problems with four steps each while also managing behavior and being responsive to psycho-social needs is a big ask of Working Memory given what we know about its limits. In that setting there is no such thing as taking mental notes. At least not effectively. So yesterday I showed examples of a couple of teachers who had done two really important things:

1) Built themselves and paper-to-pencil tracker to gather data as they circulated. These were more than just a blank space to take notes. In Denarius Frazier’s case he had anticipated and listed likely errors and was ticking off which ones he saw. SUPER efficient.�� In Erin Magliozzi’s case she was marking up a version of the work students were doing with the names of students to call on at different points.

2) Written out an ‘exemplar��: an ideal answer they hoped students would arrive at. They put this on their clipboard so they could constantly glance at it, thereby, 1) refreshing their own Working Memory (or perhaps better said, allowing themselves to use their WM for toher things knowing they could refresh it at any time) and 2) more easily compare student answers to the ideal and thus spot gaps and errors more quickly.

Today I’d like to follow-up with two more videos on the topic.

This beautiful video of Julia Addeo ‘Checking for Understanding�� in her math class. She’s circulating as students solve a problem and actively seeking to understand more about what they don’t understand. As she does so you can see she’s carrying around her own version of a WM tool–she calls it her “monitoring key.”�� She glances at it over and over as she responds to student work. This allows her to not have to hold a memory of the solution in her head and thus to be more present and more perceptive with her students. The highlight (for me) comes at thirty seconds or so of the video when you can se her literally step back from the students, review the notes she’s taken and the exemplar she’s build, reflect and then decide on her course of action–there’s a brief and definitive nod when she’s realized what she wants to do.�� You can watch it here:

2. But we loved this video so much–and though Julia’s teaching was so good–that we interviewed her about it. In this lesson you can hear her talking about what’s on her sheet of paper and why and how she uses it. Again she calls it her “monitoring key�� which shows that she’s adapted the idea to her won needs and uses. But a couple of things we noticed: How often she glances at it�� that is how helpful it is to be reminded of what she’s looking at and for. She writes on it occasionally. She refers to it constantly even though she clearly knows the math inside out. She just wants to free her WM for other (more important) things. We also notice how often she check her ‘monitoring key�� while she’s deciding. Having her notes in one simple tidy place allows her to think/review/think/review/think/review/decide. ������’s the interview:

Thanks so much to Julia for sharing her insights and teaching with us!

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Posted a quick note on Twitter the other day about working memory and teachers- how using a clip board to note observations could teachers�� working memory to be more responsive the students as they interacted and how having an exemplar–and ideal student answer you’d like to get to–written out and carried around with you could allow you to not have to try to hold that idea in your working memory as you spoke to students so again you’d have more working memory free to interact, and could refresh your recollection from time to time.

I thought I’d post some examples from actual classrooms to show that I mean.

In this video Denarius Frazier circulates as his students divide polynomials.��

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He’s taking notes as they work so he is able to 1) hold on to the observation that grows incrementally over time that finding the remainder is the main problem for his students. His intervention at the end is based on this accumulation of data but all the while as he tracks it he is able to 2) interact with each student in an authentic and responsive way as he walks around. This is due in large in part to the fact that he is not trying to also remember who struggled with what. He is actually building a histogram of student errors as we works the room but you’d never know it because when he’s not building it he’s not thinking about it! The point isn’t even really that his clipboard helps him to remember. It’s that it causes him not not have to focus his attention on trying to remember. He can be fully present with students. Without the clipboard he might remember that remainders were the issue. But his interactions with students and perceptions about their work wouldn’t be nearly as good.

He also has an exemplar on his clipboard.�� You can see him use it to refresh his working memory at 1:12 in the clip.

Denarius glancing at his exemplar to refresh his working memory.

Again this allows him to give this student a key piece of feedback without trying to remember the steps to the answer himself as he works the room. He can focus on her answer.

His students feel the connection and his faith in them because he is fully present. But he’s also gathered a ton of data: that 8 or so students need to review how to find the remainder; that the right person to Show Call is Fagan; that Quinetta had an alternative solution.

In this video Erin Magliozzi notes on her clipboard two students whom she wants to call on (Corey and Jackie) and why. “Jackie,�� she says, “I’m going to ask you to share that difference.�� Five minutes later she remembers exactly what was great about her answer and makes her feel great about it.

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There are several minutes of lovely interactions between her and students between the time she makes these observations and when she seamlessly calls on them, easily weaving what was useful and important in their answers into her narrative as she calls on them. There’s just no way she could make them feel so seen and valued in that moment–and done the same with all the kids in between–if she was trying to hold those details in her working memory the whole time.

“Jackie, I’m going to ask you to share that difference.��

One teacher on Twitter asked in response: “So I’ll be more present if I am writing on a clipboard while circulating?�� Maybe she was being sarcastic. Maybe not. But the answer is: Yes, you probably will.

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42,000 students and counting��

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In October, our Consulting & Partnerships team completed a 30-month partnership (March 2021-September 2023) with Texas�� largest charter school network, . Our role was to help the network refine its vision for instructional leadership, then build training and systems to study progress across its 55 (now 60) schools.�� Dan Cotton and Dillon Fisher, who worked on the project, shared this reflection on some of the challenges of making change at scale. They’ll share further reflections in the coming weeks.

Introduction: A High Difficulty Dive

It’s worth observing how high the level of difficulty Harmony’s dive is: implementing anything across 300+ leaders, 42,000 students, and 60 campuses spread across the state of Texas would be challenging. Improving lesson preparation–one of their “Core 4”–at that scale is truly ambitious. By number of students served, Harmony would rank in the top 150 school districts in the US.

So besides supporting the academic achievement of 42,000 students, our partnership was a chance for us to answer a key question large school systems that seek to deliver an outstanding education for all of their students must solve:�� What does it take to drive substantive, durable changes in adult behavior across school systems of that size resulting in sustained student growth and achievement?��

The data indicate we’re on the right track to answering this question.��

In 2023, Harmony made its largest jump in the last 5 years in average scaled scores on state assessments and significantly outpaced the state average:

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Schools are such complex organizations that growth in student achievement in a single school or large district is always the result of multiple factors. At the center of Harmony’s vision for instructional leadership is its Core 4–the key capacities all leaders need to develop to ensure effective teaching in every classroom:

Coaching Lesson PreparationObservation-FeedbackStudent Work Analysis��Practice-Based Professional Development��

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Harmony’s senior leaders identify their leaders�� increasing effectiveness with executing the Core 4 as a key driver of their results.��

Why Lesson Prep?

In the past 5 years, schools across the US (and throughout the world) have recognized the importance of High Quality Instructional Materials–putting rigorous, grade level content in front of kids–as a necessary condition for equity and academic achievement. But even the highest quality materials don’t teach themselves. To achieve these outcomes, they need to be coupled with effective instruction.��

In order to ensure Harmony could best support teachers in this task, we chose to prioritize Lesson Preparation. Specifically, we sought to support Harmony in determining how to develop and scale teachers�� capacity to engage in effective lesson preparation: Could we help leaders get clear on a process of lesson preparation and support their teachers in using it so that it resulted in students engaging more deeply and mastering more rigorous lessons?

������’s what we’ve learned about implementing Lesson Preparation (and other major initiatives) at scale:

Define and communicate a clear expectation for leaders and teachers of the vision for effective lesson preparation. This included beginning with videos of exemplary teaching and the accompanying lesson preparation the teacher did that produced the excellence observed in the video.Create a clear, coaching protocol for leaders to use to support teachers in building capacity for independent lesson preparation. We provided an initial protocol and, working alongside Harmony colleagues, then studied its implementation across Harmony, revising it together to meet the challenges and opportunities of Harmony’s specific context.Provide network leaders with a window into what coaching and teaching–both preparation and execution–look like in order to identify trends and respond. We built a google-form based system to collect coaching video, teaching video and leader and teacher preparation documents from across Harmony’s 55 campuses. Importantly–it was easy for leaders to submit their work and easy for the network (and us) to pull from to study trends.��Develop curriculum specific Lesson Delivery Models so that leaders and teachers have a shared understanding for how lessons unfold. We worked alongside Harmony’s Curriculum Directors to help them define the vision for how a lesson should unfold in their particular content area, with their curriculum, then collect video and build PD/training to support understanding and implementation of the vision.Sustain a multi-year commitment to internal capacity building at all levels of the organization. Harmony knew that a single year of training investment does not move a system to mastery. They have named and are continuing to advance a 6 year commitment to this work.��

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In our subsequent posts, we’ll share artifacts and examples of�� each of these learnings.

Part 2: Consistency Enables Collaboration: Harmony’s Lesson Preparation Coaching GuidePart 3: Seeing Trends: Harmony’s Artifact Collection SystemPart 4: Math, ELA, and Science Are Not the Same: Curriculum Specific Lesson Delivery Models

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“Word-Level Questions�� such as those assessing understanding for pronoun reference are powerful

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We’re getting ready to lead a two day workshop on Reading Reconsidered in Raleigh, NC on January 18 and 19 ().�� As part of the preparation we were going over some older reading footage and we found this gem from Eric Snider. It’s a short clip and if you watched it you could be forgiven for not at first noticing all of the things that are so outstanding about it.

The first thing we love about the clip is how intentional Eric is about establishing meaning before he analyzes meaning.

������’s the passage they are reading. It’s a sequence of short, apparently simple sentences from Chapter 11 of the Giver:

Climate Control. Snow made growing food difficult, limited the agricultural periods. And unpredictable weather made transportation almost impossible at times. It wasn’t a practical thing, so it became obsolete when we went to Sameness.

So often teachers will race to the bigger questions–What does the policy of Sameness reveal about the community?–without first making sure students have understood what they’ve read. But Eric wants to make sure. The passage describes, in muted language and via a bit of passive voice, the decision to alter the natural world and eliminate snow because it is inconvenient. But to understand that, you have to track the pronoun reference for “it�� back to “snow.�� They are far apart with lots of confusing potential referents appearing in between.�� It’s a classic example of the curse of expertise. Things that are difficult for novices are invisible to experts because of their own skill. As an English teacher, it’s so easy to not see that students might struggle to even understand this reference.

So Eric tests. He circles ‘it.�� He asks: What does the word “it�� refer to in this paragraph? He sees the hesitance in the raised hands�� the limited numbers of volunteers. He senses their hesitance. “Ok. Could you draw an arrow from it to the word it refers to?��

This is a brilliant move. Everyone has to try to answer. And he can circulate and glance at papers to see the full data set very quickly. They don’t really know.

Now he knows to go back and re-read. Re-reading aloud is a great move here. When his students read he can gather even more data on how well they can follow the passage. The student who reads reveals that he has failed to read agricultural and obsolete accurately. There’s no sense analyzing meaning until we have established meaning and clarity on that breaks down a LOT more than most teachers realize. So Eric gets points for checking and points for fixing. And at the end we can see him beginning to ask more analytical questions.

As a side note, we also love two things about his response to the student who reads the passage aloud. First, that he’s so appreciative and supportive but he also corrects his student. Every chance we get to ask students to read aloud is a win as it builds fluency skills and delivers data on their reading, but it only works if students feel confident and safe.�� Eric’s response models how teachers can make that happen perfectly. Second, we love that Eric uses a few of our favorite ‘implicit vocabulary�� moves.

Briefly, we know that while teaching vocabulary words directly and explicitly is important, most of the words students learn they will learn by encountering them in their reading, and so teachers also need to employ actions that reinforce vocabulary implicitly. The goal is to increase students�� attentiveness to words they aren’t familiar with and/or have not mapped orthographically. Simply having them repeat the word as a group assists with that latter process and, by helping to ensure that students know how to pronounce it, helps to ensure that they will read it and not skip it when they next see it in their reading. His quick ‘drop it in�� definition also helps students benefit more from this short interaction with the word. Implicit vocabulary moves always try to increase attentiveness to and value from exposure to new words encountered while reading for other purposes while managing the transaction cost of doing so in order to not disrupt other lesson goals. Eric does that perfectly.�� In fact, here’s an instant replay of that moment.

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We’ll discuss those two topics: implicit vocabulary and establishing meaning while reading at our workshop in Raleigh. We hope you can join us.

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That’s exactly what we do too, Taylor!!!

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A colleague who attended our recent workshop for medical educators, Josie Amory of Seattle, WA, passed along this Instagram post from Taylor Swift about her concert preparation routine:

“This insta post reminded me of the discussion we had about working memory and habits good teachers use to reduce their dependence on working memory, which in turn allows for more present moment situational awareness,�� Josie wrote.

Can I just say that I could not agree more with Josie’s take on the “Wisdom of Taylor.��

One of the most important things teachers can do to be more responsive to and connected with students during a lesson is to prepare extensively so their own lesson is clear in their own mind and they can teach with a lessened load on WM.

Working memory is limited for teachers too and if you’re trying to think about your next question or the answer you hope you’ll get, you have less of that working memory left over to observe and react to your students.

“How will I manage my own Working Memory as I teach?�� is one of the most important questions teachers can ask themselves.

And ironically, sometimes people think careful preparation makes you less flexible, but it does the opposite. It lets you be fully present during the lesson.

So to be like Taylor we suggest that teachers consider some or all of the following steps (sorry, no treadmill and dance moves):

Plan your questions in advance. You can always change them but having them written in advance means you don’t have to use working memory to think of them while performing…er��.teaching.Write out the answer you hope you’ll get to the most important questions you’ll ask in advance. By thinking about the answers you want in advance you won’t have to think about this as much when you’re teaching.Keep a written version of that answer with you so you can glance at it and refresh your working memory.Write down 2 or 3 likely mistakes or errors students are likely to make. You’ll notice them more readily if you’ve prepared to think about what you’re likely to see. Again this will let you search out misunderstandings with less load on working memory.Plan your “Means of Participation.�� Don’t just plan your questions but plan how students will answer them. Will you use a Turn and Talk and then take hands for one question and a quick Stop and Jot backstopped by a Cold Call for another? Again keep these notes with you on a clip board. More preparation for your own moves means less thinking about it while live and more WM free to listen and respond to your students. I’m a big fan of Hicks�� Law which tells us that the time and working memory required to make a decision increases with the number of choices, so it’s useful to think of a menu of, say, four or five forms of participation you might use at any given time: Turn and Talk, Stop and Jot, Cold Call, Volunteers and maybe Call and Response. Then deciding what you ask student to do next is a simple task of selecting from a small menu of familiar routines. Result: Lessened load on teacher working memory.Use a clipboard to take notes of things students say during class. Remembering things they said that you want to come back to uses up a lot of working memory. Just jot them down and now your WM is free.

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Lesson preparation in other words is different from lesson planning. Preparation is what you do to manage your Working Memory as you teach. With better preparation you can, in Taylor’s words, “be silly [or smart or thoughtful or responsive] with the fans without losing your train of thought.��

Good luck on stage!

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We often introduce ourselves in our workshops by sharing that Teach Like a Champion is more than just a book, but that we are actually a team of people who have come together to study teaching with the belief�� that any contemplation of a more just, equitable and inclusive society requires that schools are not just better, but radically better for children, especially those in our most underserved communities.����

And we are excited to share here (albeit belatedly), that that our team is continuing to grow and expand. We’re excited to share that six veteran team members have taken on larger leadership roles in our organization and that we have added two additional team members who we already can’t imagine living without. Please join us in celebrating the changes on the #BTE (internal nomenclature for “Best Team Ever��).

Tracey Koren: For you long time TLACers, the name “Tracey Koren�� is probably synonymous with TLAC. She has been your consistent go-to for all things TLAC. Her email response time heroically averages 6.5 minutes, and she keeps all the trains moving at TLAC Towers. Hardly a day goes by without us saying that we truly don’t know how we would do the work without Tracey. We are so proud to now call her our Associate Director of Operations.����

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Hilary Lewis: We are thrilled to announce that Hilary is now Managing Director of Consulting and Partnerships. With over 16 years of experience in the education sector, Hilary’s knowledge, passion, and expertise has helped our organization grow since 2015. A thought leader for our classroom and school culture work, Hilary has developed and facilitated countless workshops for educators across the world. Most recently, Hilary has worked alongside our CEO Darryl Williams to build our consulting and partnership work from the ground up. In her new role, Hilary will manage our Consulting and Partnership team portfolio of 25 schools and organizations impacting over 500,000 students.

Colleen Driggs: In keeping with the marathon runners theme, many of you know Colleen from some of our earliest TLAC Clips and we’ve had the honor of continuing to learn from her since she joined the team in 2007. Colleen now leads our Reading Reconsidered Curriculum and Training work as our Managing Director of Curriculum and Professional Development. In this capacity, alongside Doug and Erica, Colleen has built a team that has brought a knowledge rich, book-based curriculum to market �� most recently gaining the approval of the Knowledge Matters Campaign. Our team is so lucky to get to learn from Colleen’s expertise and insight each and every day.��

Dan Cotton: We are thrilled to announce that Dan is now Senior Director of Strategy and Partnerships. For years, Dan has helped shape the Teach Like a Champion team’s core products and services—from developing and managing our Plug and Play portfolio to the design and launch of TLAC Online. Under his leadership, our team has established deep partnerships both stateside and abroad with organizations such as TNTP, Aptus, QELI Australia, Harmony Public Schools, and the Bluum Foundation. In his new role, Dan will manage our partnership strategic planning and development, seeking opportunities to work with organizations in service of students, teachers, and their communities.

Jen Rugani: Joining our team after her years as a principal in 2018, Jen Rugani has been pivotal in shaping the development and implementation of the Reading Reconsidered Curriculum. We are thrilled to announce that she is now a Director of Curriculum and School Support. In her new role, Jen will continue her incredible curriculum development work while sharpening her focus on the support of curriculum pilot partner schools through PD and extended coaching partnerships. In addition to her work on the curriculum team, Jen leads our TLAC Fellows work alongside Sadie McCleary and our DEI work alongside Brittany Hargrove.

Emily Badillo: Our Reading Curriculum is currently comprised of 37 novel based units serving grades 5th-8th. This wouldn’t be possible without Emily’s vision for high quality ELA curriculum and her perseverance in creating it. We are pleased to announce that Emily will now be serving alongside Jen as our Director of Curriculum and School Support. In her new role, Emily will continue to support pilot schools through PD and coaching while leading the team in content development. Given Emily’s brilliant work as a curriculum writer and meticulousness as a project planner, we’re excited that she will be focused on leading the team in our important work of revising existing units based on the rich feedback we’ve gotten from schools using our curriculum.

Christian Sparling: Christian is joining our team as our Senior Director of Operations after working for the past 15 years in schools and organizations where his focus on operational excellence built a lasting legacy for schools in NJ. His work at Relay Graduate School of Education and Leverage Leadership Institute created pathways for countless teachers and leaders to gain invaluable experiences. On Team TLAC, he is working with Array and our Operations Team to more strategically budget, plan, and operate, so that we can continue to impact as many schools and classrooms as possible.

Alonte Johnson: And our most recent addition to the TLAC Team is none other than former principal Alonte Johnson who joins our team as Associate Director of Curriculum and School Support. Having been on the team now for just a few months, Alonte has already made an incredible impact. Internally, we’ve learned much through his insights and thoughtful perspectives as a former teacher and school leader. Externally, he’s led several remote and in-person PDs and is focusing on deep support of curriculum implementation in a pilot program with NYC DOE schools, and also supporting Brittany Hargrove in our Advocacy work.

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It’s truly pinch-worthy that we get to work alongside so many incredible people. To meet the rest of the #BTE, please check out our team .��

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Definitely NOT kids�� stuff��

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This week Jen Rugani and I have been presenting our first iteration of a new workshop, Foundational Literacy.

Why a Foundational Literacy workshop?

There’s been a massive and important migration towards structured literacy programs with systematic and synthetic phonics in the primary grades. That’s a good thing. (Heavy debt of gratitude here to Emily Hanford and her ).

But a better reading program is not enough. The program has to be taught well, too, with precision and energy and pace, if we want to see transformational reading outcomes. And that is surprisingly hard.

Surprising, we say, because, foundational reading, which is heavy on repetition and direct instruction, seems so easy.

It is anything but. The body of knowledge students have to master on the way to fluent expressive reading��44 letter sounds, 74 consonant blends and more than 125 digraphs, for starters—is an order of magnitude larger than any other body of information our youngest students have to master. And they have to know it all. And know it cold. So the details–how we cause high quality practice where we assess student progress effectively and keep the energy level high—matter and are not easy to master.

In light of that, consider the this short clip of Dayla Bedford, a first grade teacher at Emma Donnan Elementary School in Indianapolis, IN.

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To us, Dayla is crushes the details. The practice is efficient and productive; joyful and lively. And Dayla’s ability to make it look easy is absolutely deceptive.

Some Key Points:

One of the crucial things Dayla does is to vary her Means of Participation between whole group and individual response. The overall ratio is roughly one to one but who, when remains unpredictable. The whole group responses give everyone practice and keep the energy and engagement high; the cold calls ensure loving accountability for all students (attentiveness is SO important) and give some students extra work on sounds they need to practice.Speaking of attention, notice how hard—but efficiently and subtly—Dayla works to ensure student attention, especially keeping their eyes on the letter card. If students are not looking at the letter when they make the sound they are not practicing decoding.Her participation routines keep the energy high in part because her cueing is so crisp and consistent. (Just Mason; Everybody; Just Daniel; Everybody; Rayshawn, Go; Everybody; Just Maya; Everybody; Just Jo-osh).�� She keeps to a steady, predictable rhythm, drawing out names in a sing-song style when necessary to maintain the beat. The importance of this is easy to overlook.�� When there is a rhythm people join with it, simply, happily and un-selfconsciously.And speaking of routines, because the students all answer precisely on-cue she can hear better what sounds they actually make!�� This is a huge deal. Dayla crushes the “forensic listening�� (listening for precise details of sound formation) in part because the on-cue responses make it easier for her to hear.Lastly the joy and positivity are unmistakable. In addition to her other routines, Dayla has fast easy affirmations for students when she needs to correct them or when they are correct so they feel successful and motivated to learn. Because her own moves are habit–a routine–for her, she can lead with little load on her working memory and she can use her conscious thinking to listen carefully or smile and affirm students.

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Go, Dayla and thanks for sharing your teaching with us!

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I will not freak out. I will not freak out. I will not freak out��.

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Our weekly team meeting gives us the chance to do what we love most: study great teaching. This week, we had the privilege to study Dayla Bedford of Emma Donnan Elementary School in Indianapolis, IN. Dayla joyfully and skillfully executing a phonics lesson with her first-graders. [We’ll share a longer video of Dayla’s impressive phonics instruction soon (and we are excited to share more on that in our upcoming remote )] But we couldn’t pass up the chance in the meantime to share how Dayla handled a special visitor to her classroom: a bug! TLAC team-member Dillon Fisher shared her notes:

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You may be thinking: What can a bug show me about great teaching?! But with Ms. Bedford at the helm, the answer is: a lot! Check out the moment below:

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Here are a few lessons we can take from Dayla’s savvy response:

Reactions Matter: Dayla’s first-graders are deep in their routine when the visitor appears. When one student notices the bug, Dayla is�� exemplifies Firm Calm Finesse:�� “Oh, is there a bug? That’s okay, Ms. Bedford’s got it.���� With a smile…a bit of what we call bright face�� Dayla scoops up the bug with a tissue. Her Economy of Language is also key. She doesn’t overtalk the bug, or explain that ���dz���پ������-�ɱ�-�����-���ܲ���-���Ի�-���ܲ���-������-�Դdz�-��-����Dz�����-���Ի�-�ɱ�-��Dz�’t-�Ա���-�ٴ�-�ڰ��𲹰�-�dzܳ�.�� She models calmness; says less, and avoids giving it more attention than is warranted.��Lean on Routines when the Unexpected Happens: Dayla has installed routines into every part of her phonics lesson: students know how to respond and when, how to celebrate and support their peers, and how to transition to a new section of practice. A routine is in short a procedure everyone knows to the point of habit. Which means they can all complete a simple task on cue with out needing further directions.�� To do something is to be distracted from something else. To do something familiar is to be reminded that everything is fine. So Dayla uses on her routines to help her students transition. Dayla gives her students a clear What To Do Direction to cue a familiar cheer–something they say when a classmate makes a mistake–to transition from strange event to normal. “Everybody say: that’s okay! That’s okay!�� �� and all of a sudden, it is.��Use the What To Do Cycle�� to refocus attention: In less than 15 seconds, almost all of Dayla’s students are sending shine and Mason is back to decoding. But Dayla notices a few students who need a bit more support rejoining the lesson. She responds, “Look at the word. Ooh, Josh is ready, voices ready.�� It’s a warm, but important register shift, (an important component of Strong Voice). She drops her volume slightly, her ‘o�dz��� signals student attention, and she goes slightly more formal with her body language (standing up straight and using her pointer to focus attention on the words) before giving a clear What To Do Direction: ��Look at the word�� Voices ready��. Dayla engages everyone in the next word decoding and they’re back to learning.

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We never imagined that a bug would lead to such team critter-chatter (couldn’t help myself), but, thanks to Dayla, we are grateful that it did. This clip reminds us the value in staying ‘steady at the helm�� in all circumstances and in leaning on clear What To Do Directions to help students navigate the unexpected with as much confidence and joy as her first-graders did.��

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Different from a magician.

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I watched a fascinating moment in a reading classroom last week.

The class (third grade) was reading Charlotte’s Web when they came across this scene:

“But Charlotte,�� said Wilbur, “I’m not terrific.��

“That doesn’t make a particle of difference,�� replied Charlotte. “Not a particle. People believe almost anything they see in print. Does anybody know how to spell terrific?��

“I think,�� said the gander, “It’s tee double ee double rr double rr double eye double see see see see see.��

“What kind of acrobat do you think I am?�� said Charlotte in disgust.

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The teacher paused here and asked why Charlotte was disgusted with the gander.

Two students responded. The first said because the gander always talked to much. The second because the gander always said everything three times.

Both of which are true and both of which are wrong.

It would have been easy to assume that the problem was skill-based: that the students didn’t understand something about Charlotte’s perspective, that they didn’t understand something about how to infer a character’s point of view.

But the teacher asked a simple question: Who knows what an acrobat is?

There were a smattering of hands but not many. A boy responded: “It’s a little bit like a magician.��

Revelation: The problem was not a skill problem. It was a knowledge problem. The class did not know what an acrobat was. If you don’t know what an acrobat is you don’t know that Charlotte is disgusted because the gander’s very long spelling of the word implies lots of work hanging precariously from a web. And asking a bunch of “what might Charlotte be feeling?�� questions or discussing how to make an inference about character won’t help.

I suspect this is a chronic problem in the teaching of reading. We see reading comprehension issues as skill-based problems when in fact they are knowledge-based, but because we, as teachers, have more knowledge than our students, we can be blind to the gaps. This is sometimes called the curse of expertise or the curse of knowledge. It’s actually quite difficult in the moment to ask about the knowledge gaps because it’s hard to see them. It might never cross a teacher’s mind —that kids wouldn’t know what an acrobat is.

So A+ to the teacher I observed for her question.

But what to do next?

The teacher in this case asked students to discuss with their partner what an acrobat might be and here I thought: good but not great. They were mostly guessing. Best, I think would be to provide a definition of acrobat: “a person who performs skillful moves in the air, like in a circus,�� perhaps. Maybe even with a picture like the one above. Then: “Write that in the margin. Great. Why might writing the word the gander has proposed require Charlotte to be an acrobat?�� Why might it disgust her?��

This, I would argue, is a knowledge-based solution. Give students the knowledge they lack. Ask them to apply it to the problem.

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