Introduction and Chapter One

Hope all of you are having a great summer wherever you are!  I have been mostly working on a kitchen remodel at my house, and have learned a new way to measure temperature, namely, the number of sweaty t-shirt changes required in a work day.  (True, this unit of measurement has been developed previously by Mr. Milkie as a quantifiable way to measure the enjoyment derived from a morning of Sunday basketball, but I am pleased with myself for discovering the new work-related application.)I have also been reading Teach Like a Champion and have been enjoying it a great deal.
If you haven't started yet, don't freak out.  You've got about a month to finish it, and it goes quite quickly. I actually mowed through about 50 pages on a stopped Amtrak train after we struck a moped rider.  Evidently, he was fine. Don't skip the introduction or the videos, either; they're awesome.
In the introduction, which you are not skipping, Lemov makes a few interesting points.  First, I think it's nice to know that the teachers he's observing are working in schools much like our own.  Specifically, these are people working in urban college-prep charter schools.  In pp 19-23, Lemov lays out data showing how their schools outperform others in the district and close the achievement gap.  Sounds familiar!  Also noteworthy: one of the Uncommon schools is North Star Academy, where we went to study Interim Assessments with Lemov's colleague, Paul Bambrick, before starting our own interims here at Noble.  Lemov's techniques are concrete, actionable steps that we can apply, practice, and master. In fact, we have teachers in our school who are already doing many of these things, whether or not they ever used Lemov's language for them.  Still, it will be nice to have a common language for techniques that many use naturally and others have yet to try.
Soon we will all have read Chapter One, featuring Techniques 1-5 (No Opt Out, Right is Right, Stretch It, Format Matters, and Without Apology). Many of these techniques strike me as difficult to pull off in the spur of the moment, without planning them specifically.  To this end, I thought it would be interesting to practice  together, using one of Lemov's end-of-chapter reflection questions (p.56):

"Think of ten Stretch It questions you  might ask for the scenario (list, p.56) closest to what you teach."

Together, I bet we can think of way more than ten examples.  If you can think of some examples, please share by posting a comment.  Also, post and let us know what you're currently up to!