School of Practice

Narrow, rigid math has “turned students off for generations,” says renowned researcher and Stanford mathematics professor Jo Boaler. 

Yet teachers often don’t have much choice when it comes to math curriculum—what’s mandated by a school or district is what they need to teach.

That’s where *rich tasks* can be transformative, Boaler argues, because they invite the type of reasoning and problem-solving that get kids digging in and taking risks. 

In this episode of School of Practice, we’ll chat with Boaler—who’s spent decades studying math teaching—about how to choose, adapt, and improve math tasks; the power of reasoning and visualizing math questions; and the impact of tiny tweaks, like asking students: “Can you prove it to me visually?”

Related resources:

Learn more about this episode

5 Ways to Encourage Deep Mathematical Thinking

Are We Teaching the Math Kids Need?

Rough Draft Thinking Can Make Math Class More Inclusive

Should More Time Be Spent Learning Math Facts?

7 Ways to Balance Joy With Rigor in Math Class

If You’re Not Failing, You’re Not Learning

Research: Productive Failure in Learning Math (2014)

How to Build a Healthy Math Identity (video)

6 Unproductive Ways to Learn Math Basics—and What to Do Instead

Math-ish

YouCubed: Moving from Maths Anxiety (video)

YouCubed: Math-ish in the Classroom

YouCubed: Jo Teaching a Visual Dot Card Number Talk

YouCubed: Fluency without Fear

YouCubed: Wise Investments, Big Returns: Prioritizing Teachers for Districtwide Mathematics Success

Getting scaffolding right—amid the messy reality of teaching 30+ students at different skill levels—is one of the toughest challenges in teaching. 

Done well, it looks like tactical magic: teachers seamlessly know how and when to support kids, then step back at just the right moment, building independence by removing the training wheels. 

In this episode of School of Practice, we get into it with Beck Alber, a former high school ELA teacher and UCLA School of Education instructor. She unpacks the evidence-based essentials of smart, timely scaffolding—both for new teachers, as well as classroom veterans (have you changed up your routines lately? No? Alber’s got suggestions for that). We’ll chat about how to determine if your scaffolds are working, what to do if they’re not, and what a strong scaffolding toolbox looks like. 

Related resources:

Learn more about this episode

6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students

Empowering Middle School Students to Create Their Own Scaffolds

Scaffolding Like a Pro: Powerful Ways to Support Learning

6 Foundational Ways to Scaffold Student Learning

Frayer Model (downloadable)

Fishbowl Method (downloadable)

60-Second Strategy: Fishbowl Discussion (video)

Choosing Words to Teach

Research: Benefits of Interactive Graphic Organizers in Online Learning: Evidence for Generative Learning Theory (2021)

Research: The Early History of the Scaffolding Metaphor: Bernstein, Luria, Vygotsky, and Before (2019)

Maybe you’ve seen it in your classroom: Students who zip through chapters but then can’t tell you much about what they just read. To move those kids from fluency to sense-making, you’ve got to teach them the habits of good independent readers.

In this episode of School of Practice, educator and literacy specialist Nina Parrish walks us through evidence-based strategies that keep kids focused as they tackle challenging texts—from pre-reading tactics that make vocabulary stick and activate prior knowledge, to active reading protocols that turn kids into engaged, metacognitive readers who are always asking themselves, “Did I really understand that?”

Related resources:

Learn more about this episode

5 Ways to Support Students Who Struggle With Reading Comprehension

5 Research-Backed Ways to Build Better Readers

4 Reading Strategies to Retire This Year (Plus 6 to Try Out!)

How to Move From the ‘Main Idea’ to ‘Background Knowledge’

Slowing Down the Reading Process to Build Students’ Comprehension Skills

Aiding Reading Comprehension With Post-its

4 Ways to Teach Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension

Sweeping Round Robin Reading Out of Your Classroom

Research: Promoting Fluency Through Challenge: Repeated Reading With Texts of Varying Complexity 

Research: A Longitudinal Randomized Trial of a Sustained Content Literacy Intervention from First to Second Grade: Transfer Effects on Students’ Reading Comprehension 

Research: Effects of a Read Aloud Intervention on First Grade Student Vocabulary, Listening Comprehension, and Language Proficiency 

Research: Understanding Specific Reading Comprehension Deficit: A Review 

Research: The Effect of Mandatory Reading Logs on Children’s Motivation to Read

Have you ever been shocked when your students bomb a unit test after weeks of seemingly locked-in learning? 

Veteran educator Jay McTighe has the ultimate research-backed solution: formative assessment. In the best-case scenario, it’s frequent, quick, and highly attuned to the content and your students. 

“You don’t want to wait till the end to find out, ‘Gosh, I didn’t realize the kids never understood this concept or had this continued skill error,’” says McTighe, an author and assessment expert. “Whatever you’re teaching, you should always be doing very quick checks to see how it’s working.”

Frequent pulse checks midstream are “potentially one of a classroom educator’s most powerful tools to enhance student learning,” according to David Marzano, a leading researcher. They’re also important tools for students to gauge their own progress. The key to getting the best outcomes is *how* you deploy them.

In this episode of School of Practice, we chat with McTighe about how to get the most out of formative assessments, how to choose the right technique for your content and students, how to insert them seamlessly into the flow of instruction, and whether or not they should be graded. Plus, Jay shares his “Vagoo Rule,” a mysterious yet very important tip that you won’t want to miss.

Related resources:

8 Quick Checks for Understanding 

Building SEL Skills Through Formative Assessment

7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment

13 Super-Quick Formative Assessments 

Research: The Impact of Formative Assessment on K-12 Learning: A Meta-Analysis 

Assessing Student Learning by Design: Principles and Practices for Teachers and School Leaders 

Research: The Effectiveness and Features of Formative Assessment in US K-12 Education: A Systematic Review 

Seven Keys to Effective Feedback

Research: Formative Assessment Is an Essential Component of Classroom Work and Can Raise Student Achievement 

Hacking Student Motivation 

The 10 Minute Teacher Podcast

Did you know there’s a strong connection between the hand and the neural circuitry of the brain? 

As students learn to write letters by hand, they also learn to recognize them more fluently. This letter recognition leads to greater letter-writing fluency, which leads to stronger overall reading development. Handwriting, the research reveals, is in fact a foundational tool for literacy. And as kids get older, the benefits continue, deepening how they process new material and encode learning.

Meanwhile, good handwriting instruction doesn’t require a huge time investment: Brief instructional lessons followed by frequent modeling and feedback for students can slip into all areas of the curriculum throughout the school day, says Brooke MacKenzie, a former elementary teacher and certified reading specialist. “Handwriting practice can and should be quick and dirty,” she says. “It’s not like you need a 20-minute lesson on how to hold your pencil.”

In this episode of School of Practice, MacKenzie chats with us about four fundamental handwriting skills. Plus, she shares her top instructional secrets—from using cursive to help students struggling with print to why Kindergarteners should “talk to their pencils.”

Related resources:

How to Teach Handwriting—and Why It Matters 

The Power of Multimodal Learning (in 5 Charts)

Neuroscientists Say Don’t Write Off Handwriting

The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2025

Research: The Impact of Handwriting and Typing Practice in Children’s Letter and Word Learning: Implications for Literacy Development (2025)

Research: Handwriting But Not Typewriting Leads to Widespread Brain Connectivity: A High-Density EEG Study with Implications for the Classroom (2024)

Research: The Importance of Cursive Handwriting Over Typewriting for Learning in the Classroom: A High-Density EEG Study of 12-Year-Old Children and Young Adults (2020)

Research: The Effects of Handwriting Experience on Functional Brain Development in Pre-literate Children (2012)

Ghost Games (2022)