Ben Katcher

@Doug_Lemov What a great moment!

A 🧵: Came home from a trip this week to find my daughter reading The Scarlet Letter in the living room. Assumed it was for school. "Nope," she said. "Just wanted to read it. It's amazing..." I asked her if she would read it aloud & she said (a bit surprisingly) yes....

@labattical2 @Doug_Lemov That makes sense. I haven't experienced that, personally.

@Doug_Lemov @ben_katcher Mostly agree, but a lot of districts still have expectations (I.e. no "teacher talk" for more than 5 minutes during observations) that work at cross-purposes with solid instruction.

This study finds the primary drivers of teacher attrition to be: * Workload * Inadequate support for student behavior * Compensation * Reduced autonomy sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

@Doug_Lemov Asking teachers to develop high-quality curriculum and meet the needs of 130+ students simultaneously is not a formula for teacher retention or student achievement.

@Doug_Lemov For me, it's lack of high-quality curriculum leading to burnout. So I'd actually like *less* "autonomy" because I think it would lead to more self-efficacy and reduce my workload. "High-quality" is doing a lot of work in that last sentence. Impossible to find, unfortunately.

Subscribe to my newsletter here! mailchi.mp/142f1feb75aa/k…

My latest newsletter on how to build students' background knowledge so they can unlock complex text and think historically. knowledgefirsteducation.com/blog/buildnbsp…

@adamboxer1 This makes a lot of sense. I’m going to apply these ideas. Thank you.

I understand that some people are really wedded to writing notes, and say they couldn't listen without it. The problem is, if you've only experienced "lecture", that makes sense. But if you've experienced a high engagement classroom where all students are answering *dozens* of questions verbally or on a mini-whiteboard throughout, and teachers are using a range of Attention Builders to maintain participation, you'd know that "note taking" of any kind is detrimental. At best, it helps people process a bit. But normally, it doesn't. Its just copying verbatim and an attention hoover, that never gets referred back to. Teaching is zero sum. If I have a choice between "students writing notes" and "students writing answers to specific questions that I have chosen" its obvious which one to go with.

@Beanie0597 @P_A_Kirschner Neither should high schools.

@MrDBGorham @MrZachG I want to use them more. Where should I go to read about/see video of teachers using them well?

@MrZachG They work well for HS

I’m not a high school teacher, so what do I know, but there are plenty of high schools in the UK that use mini whiteboards and other high ratio techniques, get great results, and yet I’m constantly told that high school students are a different breed and these methods won’t work.

@MrZachG It is so patently obvious that phones should be banned in class.

What explains that the same people who advocate for explicit instruction also support phone bans? A simple explanation is that phones suck attention in class. But really, it’s the rejection of romantic beliefs that whatever the kid wants is somehow best for them.

@Doug_Lemov @EconTalker Loved this! Great to hear many ideas I am familiar with again and some new ones as well. I especially appreciated the discussion about vocabulary.

I'm a huge fan of the @EconTalker podcast. Russ Roberts is such an insightful listener & interviewer, (& has always read deeply). So I'm lucky to have been on the show to discuss a topic we both care deeply about: reading & how to teach it better. econtalk.org/read-like-a-ch…

@MrZachG I am really interested in the idea of mixing inputs and outputs and findings ways to use MWB. Where would I go to see more examples of how to do this well?

Still a best seller, Just Tell Them is great for launching the year around common sense explicit teaching practices grounded in the science of learning.

@adamboxer1 @greg_ashman I think it depends how you define “relationship”

@greg_ashman "behaviour is all about relationships"

What piece of ‘common sense’ teaching advice do you know to be wrong?

@Doug_Lemov After 2 years of teaching AP classes, I’ll be teaching AP and on-level this year. Thinking about how to modify methods (knowledge organizers, retrieval practice, etc.) for students with less background knowledge (making a generalization there)

...managing loads on working memory, using direct instruction, & ensuring lots of retrieval practice is the best differentiation you can do.

Educators often focus on how students learn differently. Much of the theory there (e.g. learning styles) is not supported by evidence. What IS supported by evidence is the overall structure of human cognition- the similarities in how the great majority of us learn. In...

@ReadSimplified Congratulations!

❝In August 2024, only 47 percent of my new first graders met grade-level expectations. In May 2025, every single one of them was reading at or above grade level. Every. Single. One.❞ 👆🏾

@ClassroomD4 Love this! Just altered my template to include your explanations. Thank you!

To help my students with the Because But and So sentence expansion activity, from #TheWritingRevolution, I created the following template. Download for Free. justtwoteachers.com/the-writing-re…

Proud to report my students crushed their AP US History exams again! My results are much, much better than other teachers at my school. Why? The knowledge-building cycle. Read more: bit.ly/3TOqkP4 Email me at knowledgefirsthistory@gmail.com to learn how I can help you.

@KnowledgeMatrs @Doug_Lemov @natwexler @dylanwiliam @DTWillingham @MrZachG @PatriceBain1 @CurriculumMatrs @serenavwhite @GregariousMrO Love this. I wish my students read more whole books in English class. In history class, I try to find short nonfiction narrative stories that serve a similar purpose. For example, devoting a class period to reading Robert Caro's description of the lynching of Emmet Till.

📖Persistence in a challenging text is a gift in education! All students should have this opportunity!💙 🔋@Doug_Lemov discusses the POWER of whole BOOKS in Episode 4 of the #KnowledgeMatters Podcast. 🎧Listen here or on your favorite streaming service: tinyurl.com/ynnhd8jd

@learnwithmrlee @msrebeccabirch Yes, the students need to experience the process and the success. Show them, don't tell them.

You might find this paper interesting... "Even after learners are made aware of effective learn­ing strategies, they do not automatically endorse or use those strategies." Turns out changing the behavioural habit is the hard part. They need some intervention in order to make the change & then see that it works before buying into it.

I have a theory that teaching students about Dunlosky and the Bjorks is enough to lower academic stress, even if they don't apply what they know. It shifts the locus of control to "I know how to study effectively, I just choose not to," rather than "WTF am I doing?"

@Doug_Lemov Love this. And I like the idea of 70-80% hit rate. My only thought is to encourage students to use notes/knowledge organizers for the 20-30% they don't know, so that they are more likely to encode in long-term memory and get right next time.

Had the pleasure of doing a webinar on retrieval practice with Nathan Estel and the always brilliant Wendy Amato this AM. We watched & discussed three great videos. You can watch the recording here: home.edweb.net/webinar/brain2…