Teach Like A Champion: 49 Techniques That Put Students On The Path To College
by Doug Lemov
(Jossey Bass, 2010)
Reviewed by Patrick Vernon, NBCT
MS Social Studies & Language Arts (NC)
Teacher Leaders Network
The ‘art of teaching’ is a term that often makes the successes of teaching seem special or allusive to some. In Teach Like a Champion, Doug Lemov seeks to draw in the reader by sharing a collection of teaching tools available to the novice and veteran alike.
Lemov draws in the reader in the Introduction by explaining that the most valuable asset these techniques give to the classroom is one resource teachers are always longing for: time. By employing techniques like Tight Transitions (#30), the teacher can more efficiently manage classroom procedures such as the passing out and collecting of classroom papers. These routine activities occur often and with increased precision can add time back to instruction in the form of several days over the course of the school year.
Other techniques emphasize classroom and student behavior management, like No Warnings (#38): If you're angry with your students, it usually means you should be angry with yourself. This technique shows how to effectively address misbehaviors in your classroom.
In addition to the numbered techniques, Lemov includes bonus chapters on improving pacing, getting students to think critically, and recognizing that all teachers have methods through which they can strengthen students reading, vocabulary development and comprehension.
Teach Like a Champion is well organized so that the reader will find it easy to pick up long after the first reading to gain more insight on the practices detailed in the text. The author’s style of writing succinctly presents the techniques for readers to follow, but an accompanying DVD provides readers the opportunity to see the method in action.
This reviewer found the text solid enough to stand on its own without the DVD, so the inclusion of the video clips only strengthens the tools shared by Lemov. The DVD’s sound quality sometimes makes it difficult to hear the students in various classrooms, but as the clips seek to show the teacher’s modeling of techniques, this can largely be overlooked. The clips do continue in a ‘continuous play’ fashion, so readers should be prepared to pause the DVD if they are only planning to view clips as they are discussed in the text.
Doug Lemov, co-founder of the Uncommon Schools charter school network, has put together a collection of cohesive teaching techniques that will allow teachers to maximize instructional time in their classrooms. This maximized time will better prepare the students in that classroom for future academic endeavors.
Patrick Vernon is a sixth grade social studies and English/Language Arts teacher in the Alamance-Burlington (NC) School System.
For some other views of the book, see this blog post.