Notes - Building ratio through writing

Teach like a champion 3.0: 63 techniques that put students on the path to college - Lemov Doug 2021

Notes
Building ratio through writing

1. 1. A recent study showed that background noise, especially background noise in the form of human voices, quickly reduced reading comprehension. The effect was strongest on the weakest readers. Is there any reason to think writing would be any different? See Giada Guerra et al., “Loudness and Intelligibility of Irrelevant Background Speech Differentially Hinder Children's Short Story Reading,” Mind, Brain, and Education (October 2020).

2. 2. In Motivated Teaching. Please read this book; truly, it is excellent.

3. 3. Meaning you won't turn it in today. Once you've got everybody going you might collect occasionally or Show Call or any number of things, but first you just want students writing, so reduce questions, anxieties, and distractions wherever possible.

4. 4. Some classes obviously will be ready for this right away and will need less encouragement and can offer more challenges, such as “Use your new vocabulary” or “Try to think of several reasons,” from the outset.

5. 5. For more on the curriculum check out the Teach Like a Champion website: https://teachlikeachampion.com/reading-reconsidered-curriculum/.

6. 6. I like to use a slightly adapted version of Saddler's definition: “The ability to use a variety of syntactic structures to create a variety of sentences that clearly express an intended meaning.”

7. 7. https://www.ollielovell.com/tot/092/#Some_insightful_thoughts_on_teaching_Grammar_via_DaisyChristo.

8. 8. I have no idea what the technical terms are to describe most of the elements of syntax I was using in that fancy sentence above (nor am I suggesting that fancy equals good). “Vaguely appositive-like” is certainly not a technical term. But I can use most of those tools even if I don’t know what they’re called. I have at least fair-to-middling syntactic control.

9. 9. Did you glance lovingly at your copy of her book, placed in a seat of honor on your bookshelf, as you read that? If not, it suggests you have not read it. You should.

10. 10. To be fair, it's great about all aspects of writing. I'm just partial to her work on sentences.

11. 11. A story from my childhood: In fifth grade I wrote a book report. My topic sentence said the book was interesting. “You cannot write a book report in which your topic sentence calls the book interesting,” my mom said. “What kind of interesting? Why?” Back in my room I spent twenty minutes asking myself, “Well, what was so interesting about it? Why? What word could capture that?” I rewrote my sentence four or five times to understand and express more clearly what I felt. It's possible I still got a C.

12. 12. Much of my discussion of deliberate practice draws on the insights of the late Anders Ericsson, perhaps the foremost researcher on the idea of “deliberate practice” and the coiner of that term. I highly recommend his book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise.

13. 13. Admittedly, if you want to be Yo-Yo Ma, you'll need both.