Nouns and Verbs

In other words (and this is my paraphrase, not Phil's) what matters most in teaching is the act itself—the verb. Lessons, lesson plans, exercises, and the like are "just" the nouns, and focusing on them is like focusing on the teacup rather than the tea. This is more or less the point of Elizabeth Green's Building a Better Teacher (which we discussed in the autumn), and is why I was so excited to finally get the second edition of Doug Lemov's book Teach Like a Champion. It doesn't just describe 62 teaching techniques that make a difference: it comes with video clips that show how teachers use them in real classrooms. Unfortunately, only a handful of those videos are freely available, but I hope they will be enough to motivate everyone interested in being a better teacher to borrow or buy a copy of the book.