Lemov's taxonomy

have had friends ask me what I think of our neighborhood school, and my answer is quite simple. I tell them, "The school is only as good as the teacher your child has that year."

When Doug Lemov conducted his own search for those magical ingredients, he noticed something about most successful teachers that he hadn’t expected to find: what looked like natural-born genius was often deliberate technique in disguise. “Stand still when you’re giving directions,” a teacher at a Boston school told him. In other words, don’t do two things at once. Lemov tried it, and suddenly, he had to ask students to take out their homework only once.

It was the tiniest decision, but what was teaching if not a series of bite-size moves just like that?

Lemov’s Taxonomy. (The official title, attached to a book version being released in April, is “Teach Like a Champion: The 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College.”)

The article describes the work of Doug Lemov, a teacher, principal, and charter-school founder who has written a book called Teach Like a Champion: The 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College.